338 


Ingersoll 

Discourse  concerning  the 
Influence  of  America  on  the  Mind 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


A  DISCOURSE 


CONCERNING   THE 


INFLUENCE  OF  AMERICA  ON  THE  MIND; 

BEING  THE 

ANNUAL   ORATION 

DELIVERED  BEFORE 

THE  AMERICAN  PHILOSOPHICAL  SOCIETY, 

AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  IN  PHILADELPHIA, 

ON  THE  18TH  OCTOBER,  1823, 
BY  THEIR  APPOINTMENT,  AND  PUBLISHED  BY  THEIR  ORDER. 


BY  C.  J.  INGERSOLL, 

MEMBEB  OF  THE  AMERICAS  PHILOSOPHICAL  SOCIKTI . 


PHILADELPHIA : 
PUBLISHED    BY  ABRAHAM  SMALL- 

1823. 


Special  Meeting  of  the  American  Phi- 
losophical Society,  held  this  day,  it  was 

Resolved,  that  the  thanks  of  the  Society  be  com- 
municated to  Mr.  INGERSOLL,  for  the  oration 
pronounced  by  him,  this  day,  by  their  appointment^ 
and  that  he  be  requested  to  furnish  them  a  copy  for 
publication. 

Extract  from  the  Minutes. 

R.  M.  PATTERSON,  Secretary. 
Hall  of  the  Amer.  Phil.  Soc. 
Oct.  13th,  1853. 


9403SO 


A  DISCOURSE,  &c. 


APPOINTED  to  deliver  the  annual  discourse  of 
the  American  Philosophical  Society,  I  propose  to 
•sketch  the  philosophical  condition  of  this  country, 
and  explain  the  influence  of  America  on  the  mind. 
The  task  is  not  an  easy  one,  owing  to  the  extreme 
dispersion  of  the  materials.  Elsewhere  intellectual 
improvements  are  collected  in  the  accessible  reposi- 
tories of  a  metropolis,  absorbing  most  of  the  intelli- 
gence of  a  whole  nation,  and  flourishing  with  arti- 
ficial culture  long  applied.  In  the  United  States 
we  have  no  such  emporium  ;  the  arts  and  sciences 
are  but  of  recent  and  spontaneous  growth,  scatter- 
ed over  extensive  regions  and  a  sparse  population. 
We  will  begin  with  the  base  of  the  American 
pile,  whose  aggrandisement,  like  the  pyramids  of 
Africa,  confounds  the  speculations  of  Europe. 
While  the  summit  and  sides  elsewhere  are  more 
wrought  and  finished,  America  excels  in  the 
foundation,  in  which  we  are  at  least  the  se- 
niors, of  all  other  nations.  Public  funds  for  the 
B 


6 

the  education  of  the  whole  community  are  endow 
ment  exclusively  American,  which  have  been  in 
operation  here  for  several  ages,  while  the  most  im- 
proved governments  of  Europe  are  but  essaying 
such  a  groundwork,  which  indeed  some  of  them 
dread,  and  others  dare  not  risk.  It  is  nearly 
two  hundred  years  since  school  funds  were  esta- 
blished by  that  aboriginal  and  immortal  hive  of 
intelligence,  piety,  and  self-government,  the  Ply- 
mouth colony.  These  inestimable  appropriations 
are  no*v  incorporated  with  all  our  fundamental  in- 
stitutions. By  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
it  is  the  duty  of  government  to  promote  the  pro- 
gress of  science  and  the  useful  arts.  Not  one  of 
the  eleven  new  States  has  been  admitted  into  the 
Union  without  provision  in  its  constitution  for 
schools,  academies,  colleges,  and  universities.  In 
most  of  the  original  States  large  sums  in  money 
are  appropriated  to  education,  and  they  claim  a 
share  in  the  great  landed  investments  which  are 
mortgaged  to  it  in  the  new  States.  Reckoning  all 
those  contributions  federal  and  local,  it  may  be 
asserted  that  nearly  as  much  as  the  whole  national 
expenditure  of  the  United  States  is  set  apart  by 
law  s  to  enlighten  the  people.  The  public  patron- 
age of  learning  in  this  country,  adverting  to  what 
the  value  of  these  donations  will  be  before  the 
close  of  the  present  century,  equals  at  least  the  os- 
tentatious bounties  conferred  on  it  in  Europe.  In 
one  State  alone,  with  but  275,000  inhabitants, 
more  than  forty  thousand  pupils  are  instructed  at 


the  public  schools.  I  believe  we  may  compute 
the  number  of  such  pupils  throughout  the  United 
States  at  more  than  half  a  million.  In  the  city  of 
Philadelphia,  without  counting  the  private  or  the 
charity  schools,  there  are  about  five  thousand  pu- 
pils in  the  Commonwealth's  seminaries,  taught 
reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic,  at  an  expense  to 
the  public  of  little  more  than  three  dollars  a  year 
each  one.  Nearly  the  whole  minor  population  of 
the  United  States  are  receiving  school  education. 
Besides  the  multitudes  at  school,  there  are  consi- 
derably more  than  three  thousand  under  graduates 
always  matriculated  at  the  various  colleges  and 
universities,  authorised  to  grant  academical  de- 
grees ;  not  less  than  twelve  hundred  at  the  medical 
schools  ;  several  hundred  at  the  theological  semi- 
naries ;  and  at  least  a  thousand  students  of  law. 
Nearly  all  of  these  are  under  the  tuition  of  profes- 
sors, without  sinecure  support,  depending  for  their 
livelihood  on  capacity  and  success  in  the  science 
of  instruction.  In  no  part  of  these  extensive  realms 
of  knowledge  is  there  any  monastic  prepossession 
against  the  modern  improvements.  Not  long  since 
chemistry,  political  economy,  and  the  other  great 
improvements  of  the  age  were  excluded  from  the 
English  universities  as  innovations  unfit  to  be 
classed  with  rhetoric,  logic,  and  scholastic  ethics. 
Oxford  and  Cambridge,  in  the  fine  metaphor  of 
Dugald  Stewart,  are  immovably  moored  to  the  same 
station  by  the  strength  of  their  cables,  thereby  ena- 
bling the  historian  of  the  human  mind  to  measure 


the  rapidity  of  the  current  by  which  the  rest  of  the 
world  are  borne  along.  The  schools  are  equally 
stationary.  Notwithstanding  their  barbarous  disci- 
pline, and  the  barbarous  privileges  of  the  colleges, 
they  have  always  produced  good  Latinists  and  Hel- 
lenists. But  American  education  is  better  adapted 
to  enlarge  and  strengthen  the  mind,  and  prepare  it 
for  practical  usefulness.  In  that  excellent  institu- 
tion, the  Military  Academy,  the  dead  languages  are 
not  taught,  and  that  kind  of  scholarship  is  postpon- 
ed to  sciences  certainly  more  appropriate  to  a  mili- 
taiy  education.  This  is  not  the  occasion  to  inquire 
whether  those  standard  exercises  of  the  faculties 
and  roots  of  language  may  ever  be  supplanted  with- 
out injury.  But  as  it  is  certain  that  the  many  great 
men  who  have  received  education  at  the  English 
seminaries  is  not  a  conclusive  proof  of  their  excel- 
lence, though  often  cited  for  the  purpose,  so  it  is 
also  true,  that  eminent  individuals  have  appeared  in 
literature  and  science,  without  the  help  of  that  kind 
of  scholarship.  The  founder  of  the  American  Phi- 
losophical Society  was  not  a  scholar  in  this  sense ; 
yet  his  vigorous  and  fruitful  mind,  teeming  with 
sagacity,  and  cultivated  by  observation,  germinated 
many  of  the  great  discoveries,  which,  since  matur- 
ed by  others,  have  become  the  monuments  of  the 
age  :  And  whether  science,  politics,  or  polite  litera- 
ture, was  the  subject  of  which  Franklin  treated,  he 
always  wrote  in  a  fine,  pure  style,  with  the  power 
and  the  charm  of  genius. 

Successive  improvements  in  the  modern  Ian- 


9 

guages,  continually  perfecting  themselves  under  the 
prevalence  of  liberal  ideas,  have  brought  them  to  a 
degree  of  moral  certainty  and  common  attainment, 
which  must  render  the  dead  languages  less  important 
hereafter.  Their  study  will  be  confined  probably 
to  a  few  ;  and  may,  perhaps,  in  the  lapse  of  time, 
perish  under  the  mass  of  knowledge  destined  to  oc- 
cupy entirely  the  limited  powers  of  the  human  un- 
derstanding. While,  therefore,  we  are  discussing 
whether  the  learning  of  the  ancient  languages  ought 
to  be  maintained,  innovating  time  is  settling  the 
question  in  spite  of  unavailing  efforts  and  regrets 
for  the  immortal  authors  of  European  literature. 
Thus  we  may  understand  why  the  Latin  and  Greek 
languages  are  less  cultivated  in  America  than  in 
Europe.  Unfettered  by  inveterate  prepossessions, 
the  mind,  on  this  continent,  follows  in  its  march  the 
new  spirit  that  is  abroad,  leading  the  intelligence  of 
all  the  world  to  other  pursuits. 

Since  the  career  of  this  country  began,  education 
on  the  continent  of  Europe  has  severely  suffered  by 
political  fluctuations,  and  continues  to  be  thwarted 
by  political  superintendence.  Whatever  science 
and  literature  accomplish  there  must  be  in  spite 
of  a  perplexing  and  pernicious  education.  Wanting 
the  stability  and  tranquillity  and  security  of  free 
institutions,  their  existence  is  in  perpetual  fluctuation 
and  jeopardy.  The  schools  are  regulated  by  one 
dynasty  to  day,  by  another  on  opposite  principles 
to-morrow,  as  the  instruments  of  each  in  its  turn, 
employed  as  much  in  unlearning  what  had  been 


10 

taught,  as  in  learning  what  is  to  be  inculcated,  con- 
tinually molested  and  convulsed  by  state  intrusion. 
The  arts  and  sciences  which  war  requires  and  re- 
quites, may  be  encouraged  and  advanced  :  and  for- 
tunately for  mankind,  their  extensive  circle  embra- 
ces many  in  which  peace  also  delights  or  may 
enjoy.  The  northern  universities  have  best 
preserved  both  their  liberality  and  their  useful- 
ness. But  in  southern  Europe,  learning  appears 
to  be  disastrously  eclipsed  where  it  has  never 
ceased  to  receive  Pagan  and  Christian  sacrifice 
for  more  than  two  thousand  successive  years.— 
Liberty,  says  Sismondi,  had  bestowed  on  Italy 
four  centuries  of  grandeur  and  glory ;  during 
which,  she  did  not  need  conquests  to  make  her 
greatness  known.  The  Italians  were  the  first  to 
study  the  theory  of  government,  and  to  set  the  ex- 
ample of  liberal  institutions.  They  restored  to  the 
world,  philosophy,  eloquence,  poetry,  history,  ar- 
chitecture, sculpture,  painting,  and  music.  No 
science,  art,  or  knowledge  could  be  mentioned,  the 
elements  of  which  they  did  not  teach  to  people 
who  have  since  surpassed  them.  This  universality 
of  intelligence  had  developed  their  mind,  their  taste, 
and  their  manners,  and  lasted  as  long  as  Italian 
liberty.  How  melancholy  is  the  modern  reverse  of 
this  attracnve  picture!  When  even  freedom  of 
thought  can  hardly  breathe,  and  freedom  of  speech 
or  writing  has  no  existence,  revolution  is  the  only 
remedy  for  disorder ;  sedition  infects  the  schools, 
rebellion  the  academies,  and  treason  the  universi- 


11 

ties.  In  America,  where  universal  education  is  the 
hand -maid  of  universal  suffrage,  execution  has 
never  been  done  on  a  traitor ;  general  intelligence 
disarms  politics  of  their  chimerical  terrors ;  our 
only  revolution  was  but  a  temperate  transition,  with- 
out mobs,  massacres,  or  more  than  a  single  instance 
of  signal  perfidy  ;  every  husbandman  understands 
the  philosophy  of  politics  better  than  many  princes 
in  Europe.  Poetry,  music,  sculpture,  and  paint- 
ing, may  yet  linger  in  their  Italian  haunts.  But 
philosophy,  the  sciences,  and  the  useful  arts, 
must  establish  their  empire  in  the  modern  re- 
public of  letters,  where  the  mind  is  free  from 
power  or  fear,  on  this  side  of  that  great  water  bar- 
rier which  the  creator  seems  to  have  designed 
for  the  protection  of  their  asylum.  The  monarchs 
of  the  old  world  may  learn  from  those  sovereign 
citizens,  the  ex-presidents  of  these  United  States,  the 
worth  of  an  educated  nation :  who,  having  made 
large  contributions  to  literature  and  the  sciences, 
live  in  voluntary  retirement  from  supreme  authori- 
ty, at  ages  beyond  the  ordinary  period  of  European 
existence,  enjoying  the  noble  recreations  of  books 
and  benevolence,  without  guards  for  their  protec- 
tion, or  pomp  for  their  disguise,  accessible,  ad- 
mired, protected,  and[  immortalised.  The  Egyp- 
tians pronounced  posthumous  judgment  on  their 
kings  :  we  try  our  presidents  while  living  in  cano- 
nised resignation,  and  award  to  those  deserving  it, 
an  exquisite  foretaste  of  immortality. 

In  adult  life  we  may  trace  the  effects  of  the  causes 


13 

just  indicated  in  education.  The  English  language 
makes  English  reading  American  :  and  a  generous, 
especially  a  parental  nationality,  instead  of  dispa- 
raging a  supposed  deficiency  in  the  creation  of  lite- 
rature, should  remember  and  rejoice,  that  the  idiom 
and  ideas  of  England  are  also  those  of  this  country, 
and  of  this  continent,  destined  to  be  enjoyed  and 
improved  by  millions  of  educated  and  thinking 
people,  spreading  from  the  bay  of  Fundy  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Columbia.  Such  is  the  influence  of 
general  education  and  self-government,  that  already 
over  a  surface  of  almost  two  thousand  miles  square, 
there  are  scarcely  any  material  provincialisms  or 
peculiarities  of  dialect,  much  less  than  in  any  nation 
in  Europe,  I  believe  I  might  say  than  in  any  hundred 
miles  square  in  Europe ;  and,  what  is  perhaps  even 
more  remarkable,  the  German,  Dutch  and  French 
veins  which  exist  in  different  sections,  are  rapidly 
yielding  to  the  English  ascendancy,  by  voluntary 
fusion,  without  any«coercive  or  violent  applications. 
Adverting  to  the  great  results  from  the  mysterious 
diversity  of  the  various  languages  of  mankind,  the 
anticipation  is  delightful  in  the  effects  of  the  Ame- 
rican unity  of  tongue,  combined  with  universal 
education  throughout  this  vast  continent, — the 
home  of  liberty  at  least,  if  not  the  seat  of  one  great 
empire. 

But  speaking  and  writing  the  language  of  an  an- 
cient and  refined  people,  whose  literature  preoccupies 
nearly  every  department,  is,  in  many  respects,  an  un- 
exampled disadvantage  in  the  comparative  estimate. 


13 

America  cannot  contribute  in  any  comparative  pro- 
portion to  the  great  British  stock  of  literature,  which 
almost  supercedes  the  necessity  of  American  sub- 
scriptions.   Independent  of  this  foreign  oppression, 
the  American  mind  has  been  called  more  to  politi- 
cal, scientific,  and  mechanical,  than  to  literary  exer- 
tion.    And  our  institutions,  moreover,  partaking  of 
the  nature  of  our  government,  have  a  levelling  ten- 
dency.   The  average  of  intellect,  and  of  intellectual 
power  in  the  United  States,  surpasses  that  of  any 
part  of  Europe.     But  the  range  is  not,  in  general, 
so  great,  either  above  or  below  the  horizontal  line. 
In  the  literature  of  imagination,  our  standard  is  con- 
siderably below  that  of  England,  France,  Germany 
and  perhaps  Italy.    The  concession,  however,  may 
be  qualified  by  a  claim  to  a  respectable  production 
of  poetry ;    and   the  recollection   that   American 
scenes  and  incidents  have  been  wrought  by  Ame- 
rican authors  into  successful  romances,  some  of 
which  have  been  re-published  and  translated,  and 
are  in  vogue  in  Europe ;  and  that  even  popular  dra- 
matic performances  have  been  composed  out  of 
these  incidents.     The  stage,  however,  is  indicative 
of  many  things  in  America,  being  engrossed  by  the 
English  drama  and  English  actors.    But  as  a  proof 
of  American  fondness,  if  not  taste,  for  theatrical  en- 
tertainment, I  may  mention  here  that  an  English 
comedian    has   lately  received   for    performances 
before  the  audiences  of  four  or  five  towns,  whose 
united  population  falls  short  of  four  hundred  thou- 
sand people,  a  much  larger  income  than  any  of  the 
actors  of  that  country  receive  in  which  this  sort  of 
C 


intellectual  recreation  is  most  esteemed.  There 
would  be  no  inducement  for  strolling  across  the 
Atlantic,  if  the  largest  capital  in  Europe  afforded 
similar  encouragement,  taking  emolument  as  the 
test,  and  London  with  1,200,000  inhabitants  as 
the  standard.  As  another  remarkable  proof  of  the 
state  of  the  stage  in  the  United  States,  I  may  add 
that  an  eminent  American  actor  appears  in  the 
same  season,  (and  it  is  practicable  within  the  same 
month)  before  audiences  at  Boston  and  New -Or- 
leans, compassing  two  thousand  miles  from  one  to 
the  other,  by  internal  conveyance.  Such  is  the 
philosophical,  as  well  as  natural,  approximation  of 
place,  and  the  unity  of  speech  throughout  that  dis- 
tance. 

In  the  literature  of  fact,  of  education,  of  politics, 
and  of  perhaps  even  science,  European  pre-emi- 
nence is  by  no  means  so  decided.  The  American 
schools,  the  church,  the  state,  the  bar,  the  medical- 
profession,  are,  all  but  the  last,  largely,  and  all  ot 
them  adequately,  supplied  by  their  own  literature. 
Respectable  histories  are  extant  by  American  au 
thors  of  the  States  of  Kentucky,  Georgia,  North 
Carolina,  South  Carolina,  Virginia,  Maryland,  Penn- 
sylvania, New  York,  New  Jersey,  Vermont,  Maine, 
Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  and  New  Hampshire  ; 
besides  some  general  histories  of  New  England,  and 
several  geographical  and  topographical  works  on 
Ohio,  Indiana,  Illinois,  and  Missouri,  containing 
histories  of  their  settlements.  Our  national  histo- 
ries, inferior  in  subordinate  attractions  to  the  ro- 
mantic historical  fictions  of  Europe,  are  composed 


15 

of  much  more  permanent  and  available  materials. 
In  biography,  without  equal  means,  have  we  not 
done  as  much  since  we  began  as  our  English  mas- 
ters ?  In  the  literature  as  well  as  the  learning  of 
the  sciences,  botany,  mineralogy,  metallurgy,  en- 
tymology,  ornithology,  astronomy,  and  navigation, 
there  is  no  reason  to  be  ashamed  ot  our  profi- 
ciency. In  mathematics  and  chemistry,  our  com- 
parative deficiency  is  perhaps  the  most  remarkable. 
In  grammatical  researches,  particularly  in  the  in- 
teresting elements  of  the  Indian  languages,  Ame- 
rican erudition  has  preceded  that  of  Europe,  where 
some  of  the  most  learned  and  celebrated  of  the  Ger- 
man and  French  philologists  have  caught  from 
American  publications,  the  spirit  of  similar  inquiry. 
In  natural  and  political  geography  our  magnificent 
interior  has  produced  great  accomplishments,  sci- 
entific and  literary.  The  maps  of  America  have 
been  thought  worthy  of  imitation  in  Europe.  Mr. 
Tanner's  Atlas,  lately  published,  is  the  fruit  of 
a  large  investment  of  money  and  time,  and  reflects 
credit  on  every  branch  of  art  employed  in  its  exe- 
cution. The  surveys  of  the  coast  now  making  by 
government,  will  be  among  the  most  extensive,  ac- 
curate, and  important  memorials  extant.  Several 
scientific  expeditions  have  likewise  been  sent  by 
the  government  at  different  times  into  the  western 
regions,  whose  vast  rivers,  steppes  and  deltas  have 
been  explored  by  learned  men,  whose  publications 
enrich  many  departments  of  science,  and  are  incor- 
porated with  applause  into  the  useful  literature  of 
the  age.  One  of  th«  most  copious  and  authentic 


16 

statistical  works  in  print,  is  an  American  produc- 
tion, which  owes  its  publication  to  the  patronage 
of  Congress.  The  public  libraries,  particularly 
those  of  Cambridge  University,  of  the  New  York 
Historical  Society,  of  the  American  Philosophical 
Society,  of  the  city  of  Philadelphia,  of  Congress, 
and  others  which  might  be  enumerated,  abound 
with  proof  and  promise  of  the  flourishing  condition 
and  rapid  advances  of  literature  and  science  through- 
out America.  A  single  newspaper  of  this  city, 
contains  advertisements,  by  a  single  bookseller,  of 
more  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  recent  publica- 
tions by  American  authors  from  the  American 
press,  comprehending  romance,  travels,  moral  phi- 
losophy, mineralogy,  political  and  natural  geogra- 
phy, poetry,  biography,  history,  various  scientific 
inquiries,  and  discoveries,  botany,  philology,  ora- 
tory, chemistry  applied  to  the  arts,  statistics,  agri- 
cultural and  horticultural  treatises,  strategy,  me- 
chanics, and  many  other  subjects.  From  this  am- 
ple and  creditable  catalogue  I  may  select  for  espe- 
cial notice  the  Journal  of  the  Academy  of  Natural 
Sciences  as  a  work  of  uncommon  merit ;  and  the 
profound  and  elaborate  report  on  Weights  and 
Measures,  as  a  laudable  specimen  of  official  func- 
tion. 

The  first  and  the  present  Secretaries  of  the  De- 
partment of  State,  who  have  both  made  reports  on 
this  important  branch  of  scientific  politics,  rank 
among  the  foremost  scholars  of  the  age  by  their 
eminence  in  various  literary  and  scientific  attain- 
ments. The  American  state  papers,  generally,  have 
received  the  homage  of  the  most  illustrious  states- 


17 

men  of  England,  for  excellence  in  the  princi- 
ciples  and  eloquence  of  that  philosophy  which  is 
the  most  extensively  applied  to  the  affairs  of  men : 
and  their  publications  afford  large  contributions  to 
its  literature.  Whether  any  policy  be  preferable 
to  another,  is  generally  a  merely  speculative  topic. 
But  I  may  with  propriety  assert  that  the  United 
States  have  been  the  most  stedfast  supporters  of 
maritime  liberality,  of  inter-national  neutrality,  and 
of  the  modern  system  of  commercial  equality. 
They  were  the  first  to  outlaw  the  slave  trade,  and 
the  first  to  declare  it  piratical.  Great  Britain  is  imi- 
tating their  example  in  commercial,  colonial,  na- 
vigation, penal,  and  even  financial,  regulations. 
France,  Spain,  Italy,  Portugal,  parts  of  Germany, 
and  South  America,  have  in  part  adopted  their  po- 
litical principles.  And  in  all  the  branches  of  politi- 
cal knowledge,  the  American  mind  has  been  distin- 
guished. 

The  publication  of  books  is  so  much  cheaper  in 
this  country  than  in  Great  Britain,  that  nearly  all 
we  use  are  American  editions.  According  to  re- 
ports from  the  Custom-houses,  made  under  a  re- 
solution of  the  Senate  in  1822,  it  appears  that  the 
importation  of  books  bears  an  extremely  small  pro- 
portion to  the  American  editions.  The  imported 
books  are  the  mere  seed.  It  is  estimated  that  be- 
tween two  and  three  millions  of  dollars  worth  of 
books  are  annually  published  in  the  United  States. 
It  is  to  be  regretted,  that  literary  property  here  is 
held  by  an  imperfect  tenure,  there  being  no  other 
protection  for  it  than  the  provisions  of  an  ineffi- 


18 

cient  act  of  Congress,  the  impotent  offspring  of  an 
obsolete  English  statute.  The  inducement  to  take 
copyrights  is  therefore  inadequate,  and  a  large 
proportion  of  the  most  valuable  American  books  are 
published  without  any  legal  title.  Yet  there  were 
one  hundred  and  thirty,  five  copy  rights  purchased 
from  January  1822  to  April  1823.  There  have 
been  eight  editions,  comprising  7500  copies  of 
Stewart's  Philosophy  published  here  since  its  ap- 
pearance in  Europe  thirty  years  ago.  Five  hundred 
thousand  dollars  was  the  capital  invested  in  one  edi- 
tion of  Rees'  Cyclopaedia.  Of  a  lighter  kind  of  read- 
ing, nearly  200,000  copies  of  the  Waverley  no- 
vels, comprising  500,000  volumes,  have  issued 
from  the  American  press  in  the  last  nine  years. 
Four  thousand  copies  of  a  late  American  novel 
were  disposed  of  immediately  on  its  publication. 
Five  hundred  dollars  were  paid  by  an  enterpris- 
ing bookseller  for  a  single  copy  of  one  of  these 
novels,  without  any  copy  right,  merely  by  prompt 
republication  to  gratify  the  eagerness  to  read  it. 
Among  the  curiosities  of  American  literature,  I 
must  mention  the  itinerant  book  trade.  There  are, 
I  understand,  more  than  two  hundred  wagons 
which  travel  through  the  country,  loaded  with 
books  for  sale.  Many  biographical  accounts  of 
distinguished  Americans  are  thus  distributed.  Fifty 
thousand  copies  of  Mr.  Weeny's  Life  of  Wash- 
ington have  been  published,  and  mostly  cir- 
culated in  this  way  throughout  the  interior.  I 
might  add  to  these  instances,  but  it  is  unneces- 
sary, and  would  be  irksome.  Education,  the  sci- 


19 

ences,  the  learned  professions,  the  church,  politics, 
together  with  ephemeral  and  fanciful  publications, 
maintain  the  press  in  respectable  activity. 

The  modern  manuals  of  literature  and  science, 
magazines,  journals  and  reviews,  abound  in  the 
United  States,  although  they  have  to  cope  with 
a  larger  field  of  newspapers  than  elsewhere.  The 
North  American  Review,  of  which  about  four  thou- 
sand copies  are  circulated,  is  not  surpassed  in  know- 
ledge or  learning,  is  not  equalled  in  liberal  and 
judicious  criticism,  by  its  great  British  models,  the 
Edinburgh  and  Quarterly  Reviews,  of  which  about 
four  thousand  copies  are  also  published  in  the 
United  States.  Written  in  a  pure,  old  English 
style,  and,  for  the  most  part,  a  fine  American  spirit, 
the  North  American  Review,  superintends  with 
ability  the  literature  and  science  of  America. 

Not  less  than  a  thousand  newspapers,  some  of 
them  with  several  thousand  subscribers,  are  circu- 
lated in  this  country  ;  the  daily  fare  of  nearly  every 
meal  in  almost  every  family;  so  cheap  and  common, 
that,  like  air  and  water,  its  uses  are  undervalued. 
But  a  free  press  is  the  great  distinction  of  this  age 
and  country,  and  as  indispensable  as  those  elements 
to  the  welfare  of  all  free  countries.  Abundant  and 
emulous  accounts  of  remarkable  occurrences  con- 
centrate and  diffuse  information,  stimulate  inquiry, 
dispel  prejudices,  and  multiply  enjoyments.  Co- 
pious advertisements  quicken  commerce  ;  rapid 
and  pervading  publicity  is  a  cheap  police.  Above 
all  the  press  is  the  palladium  of  liberty.  An  Ame- 
rican would  forego  the  charms  of  France  or  Italy 


so 

tor  the  luxury  of  a  large  newspaper;  which  makes 
every  post  an  epoch,  and  provides  the  barrenest 
corners  of  existence  with  an  universal  succeda- 
neum.  Duly  to  appreciate  the  pleasures  of  it,  like 
health  or  liberty,  we  must  undergo  their  temporary 
privation.  Nor  is  our  experience  of  the  licentious- 
ness of  the  press  too  dear  a  price  to  pay  for  its 
freedom.  It  is  a  memorable  fact  in  the  history  of 
American  newspapers,  that  while  some  of  the  most 
powerful  have  been  consumed  in  the  combustion 
of  their  own  calumnies,  on  the  other  hand,  the  most 
permanent  and  flourishing  are  those  least  addicted  to 
defamation.  It  is  also  a  fact,  that  the  most  licenti- 
ous newspapers  which  have  appeared  in  America, 
were  edited  by  Europeans.  The  American  standard 
is  equally  removed  from  the  coarse  licentiousness 
which  characterises  much  of  the  English  press,  and 
the  constraints  of  that  of  the  rest  of  Europe — and  this 
standard  has  been  established,  while  state  prosecu- 
tions have  been  falling  into  dislike.  Our  newspa- 
pers are  regulated  by  a  public  tact  much  truer  and 
stronger  than  such  ordeals.  The  same  ethereal  in- 
fluence in  a  free  temperature,  is  equally  effective  to 
preserve  the  good  from  obloquy,  and  to  consign  the 
unworthy  to  degradation.  Where  the  press  is  per- 
fectly free,  truth  is  an  overmatch  for  detraction. 
Many  of  our  public  men  have  constantly  enjoyed 
the  public  favour,  in  spite  of  intense  abuse ;  and 
have  survived  its  oblivion,  to  receive  a  foretaste  of 
posthumous  veneration.  Under  the  light  of  these 
results,  the  press  has  learned  the  value  of  temper- 
ance, and  while  all  the  avenues  of  private  redress 


21 

are  open  to  those  who  choose  to  seek  it,  state  prose- 
cutions have  nearly  disappeared.  Irreligious,  ob- 
scene, and  seditious  publications,  are  infinitely  more 
common  from  the  English  than  from  the  American 
press  :  scurrilous  and  libellous  newspapers  exist  to 
be  sure,  but  they  are  the  lowest  and  most  obscure 
of  the  vocation  ;  whereas  in  England,  some  of  the 
most  elevated  and  best  patronised,  are  the  most 
scandalous  and  personal.  In  the  darker  ages,  dun- 
geons, scaffolds,  torture,  and  mutilation,  were  the 
dreadful,  but  vain  restraints  put  on  the  understand- 
ing. Can  it  be  supposed,  that  in  this  enlightened 
sera,  punishment,  however  mitigated,  will  do  more 
than  inflame  it  ?  And  what  is  the  English  law 
of  public  prosecution  for  libels,  but  a  milder  rem- 
nant of  those  principles  ?  By  which,  infidelity,  blas- 
phemy, sedition,  treason,  and  individual  calumny, 
are  provoked,  disseminated  and  infuriated.  Expe- 
rience has  taught  us,  that  the  freedom  of  the  press 
is  the  best  protection  against  its  abuse,  and  that  its 
transient  licentiousness  is  part  of  the  very  nature  of 
the  blessing  itself.  The  splendid  skies,  forests  and 
foliage  of  America,  with  which  Europe  has  nothing 
of  the  kind  to  compare,  are  inseparable  from  those 
vicissitudes  and  extremities  of  weather  and  seasons, 
which,  while  menacing  desolation,  purify  and  sub- 
limate existence.  This  American  deduction  of  the 
much  apprehended  postulate  of  the  press,  is  obvi- 
ously and  rapidly  gaining  converts  in  England, 
whence  perhaps  it  may  ultimately  spread  over  Eu- 
rope, and  abolish  the  pernicious  alternatives  there 


prevalent.  Without  it,  the  press  must  cause  con- 
vulsions, and  retard  the  progress  of  the  mind. 
The  English  newspaper  press,  much  less  free 
by  law  than  the  American,  is  in  practice  much 
more  licentious.  A  late  number  of  the  Quarter- 
ly Review,  (which  is  no  mean  authority  on  such 
a  point)  admits,  in  so  many  words,  that  the  occu- 
pation of  the  English  daily  press  is,  to  *  do  every 
thing  that  honor  and  honesty  shrink  from' :  to 
which  character  the  absence  of  decency  should  be 
superadded.  The  Attorney  General  protects  go- 
vernment from  libels ;  but  the  Chancellor  has 
brought  about  a  most  preposterous  state  of  things 
between  the  right  of  literary  property,  and  the  want 
of  right  in  obscene,  blasphemous,  or  otherwise  ille- 
gal subjects  of  that  property.  English  party  vitu- 
peration is  much  coarser  and  more  personal  than 
ours.  But,  without  going  into  politics,  it  may  suf- 
fice to  notice  the  difference  in  other  things.  There 
are  vented  in  the  London  newspapers,  regular  and 
perennial  streams  of  defilement — polluting  police 
reports,  details  of  inhuman  amusements,  pugilistic 
and  others,  indelicate  particulars  of  various  private 
occurrences,  the  infamous  amours  of  the  royal  and 
noble,  are  catered  for  every  day's  repast,  and  de- 
manded with  an  eagerness  which  bespeaks  a  vitia- 
ted appetite.  It  seems  to  be  thought  that  publicity, 
like  execution,  deters  from  crimes,  when  assuredly, 
they  both  stimulate  their  perpetration.  There  is 
another  office  of  the  English  press,  extremely  dero- 
gatory to  the  press  itself,  and  injurious  to  society. 
T  mean  the  journalising  private  and  domestic  con- 


33 

cerns,  and  the  most  trivial  transactions  of  social  in- 
tercourse, for  the  gratification  of  a  vanity,  peculiar 
to  the  aristocracy  of  that  kingdom.  The  effects  of 
this  proclamation  of  the  common  affairs  of  private 
life,  can  hardly  fail  to  be  injurious  to  the  female 
character  in  particular,  whose  modesty  and  retire- 
ment are  thus  perpetually  broken  in  upon.  The 
American  newspaper  press  is  conducted  in  better 
taste,  and  with  more  dignity. 

From  literature  the  transition  is  natural  to  the 
arts,  which  minister  to  usefulness,  comfort  and 
prosperity,  individual  and  national.  Under  their 
authority  to  provide  for  the  encouragement  of  the 
arts  and  sciences,  the  United  States,  in  thirty 
years,  have  issued  about  four  thousand  four  hun- 
dred patent  rights  for  new  and  useful  inventions, 
discoveries,  and  improvements.  By  the  prevailing 
construction  of  the  acts  of  Congress,  American  pa- 
tentees must  be  American  inventors  or  improvers, 
and  are  excluded  from  all  things  before  known  or 
used  in  any  other  part  or  period  of  the  world.  The 
English  law  allows  English  patentees  to  monopo- 
lise the  inventions,  discoveries,  and  improvements 
of  all  the  rest  of  the  world  when  naturalised  in  Great 
Britain.  Notwithstanding  this  remarkable  disad- 
vantage, I  believe  the  American  list  of  discoveries 
is  quite  equal  to  the  English.  The  specimens  and 
models  open  to  public  inspection  in  the  national  re- 
pository at  Washington,  are  equal,  I  understand,  to 
any  similar  .collections  in  England  or  France,  and 
superior  to  those  of  any  other  country.  It  will 
hardly  be  expected  that  I  should  undertake  to  men- 


tion  even  the  most  remarkable  articles  of  this  im- 
mense museum,  containing  every  element  of  practi- 
cal science,  of  mechanism,  of  refinement,  and  of 
skill.  I  may  be  allowed,  however,  to  say  that  the 
cotton  gin  has  been  of  more  profit  to  the  United 
States,  than  ten  times  all  they  ever  received  by  in- 
ternal taxation  ;  that  our  grain  mill  machinery,  ap- 
plied to  the  great  staples  of  subsistence,  is  very  su- 
perior to  that  of  Europe  ;  that  there  are  in  the  patent 
office  models  of  more  than  twenty  different  power 
looms,  of  American  invention,  operated  on,  and 
weaving  solely  by  extraneous  power,  steam,  water, 
wind,  animals,  and  otherwise ;  and  that  the  English 
machines  for  spinning  have  been  so  improved  here, 
that  low-priced  cottons  can  be  manufactured  cheap 
enough  to  undersell  the  English  in  England,  after 
defraying  the  charges  of  transportation.  Where 
American  ingenuity  has  been  put  to  trial  it  has  never 
failed.  In  all  the  useful  arts,  and  in  the  philosophy 
of  comfort, — that  word,  which  cannot  be  translated 
into  any  other  language,  and  v\hich,  though  of  En- 
glish origin,  was  reserved  for  maturity  in  America, 
we  have  no  superiors.  If  labour  saving  machinery 
has  added  the  power  of  a  hundred  millions  of  hands 
to  the  resources  of  Great  Britain,  what  must  be  the 
effect  of  it  on  the  population  and  means  of  the 
United  States  ?  Steam  navigation,  destined  to  have 
greater  influence  than  any  triumph  of  mind  over 
matter,  equal  to  gunpowder,  to  printing,  and  to  the 
compass,  worthy  to  rank  in  momentum  with  reli- 
gious reformation,  and  civil  liberty,  belongs  to 
America.  A  member  of  this  Society,  in  his  elo- 


quent  appeal  to  the  judgment  of  Great  Britain,  has 
argued  this  claim  ably  on  abstract  reasoning.  But, 
without  disputing  the  conceptions  and  experiments 
of  England,  France,  and  Scotland,  of  Worcester, 
Hulls,  Juffrou,  or  Miller,  or  entering  at  all  into  the 
question  of  prior  imagination,  it  has  always  appeared 
to  me  that  there  is  a  plain  principle  on  which  to  rest 
the  rights  of  this  country.  Steam  navigation  was 
reserved  for  the  genius  of  those  rivers,  on  a  single 
one  of  which  there  is  already  more  than  a  hundred 
steam-boats,  containing  upwards  of  fourteen  thou- 
sand tons,  and  in  whose  single  sea  port,  fifty  steam 
boats  may  be  counted  at  one  time.  This  was  the 
meridian  to  reduce  to  practical  results,  whatever 
conceptions  may  have  existed  elsewhere  on  this 
subject.  Necessity,  the  mother  of  this  invention, 
was  an  American  mother ;  born,  perhaps,  on  the 
shores  of  the  Potomac,  the  Delaware,  or  the  Hud- 
son, yet  belonging  to  the  Missouri,  the  Arkansas,  the 
Mississippi,  and  the  Pacific  ocean.  By  a  very  use- 
ful book  called  the  Western  Navigator,  (published 
in  this  city,)  it  appears  that  the  entire  length  of  the 
Mississippi  river  is  2500  miles,  of  the  Missouri 
3000,  of  the  Arkansas  2000,  of  the  Red  1500 ;  and 
from  the  recent  works  of  Major  Long  and  Mr. 
Schoolcraft,  it  is  ascertained  that  a  large  number  of 
-great  tributaries  unite  their  waters  with  these  prodi- 
gious floods,  washing  altogether,  according  to  the 
summary  of  the  author  of  the  Western  Navigator, 
in  the  valley  of  the  Ohio,  200,000  square  miles, 
in  the  valley  of  the  Misssissippi  proper,  180,000, 
in  that  of  the  Missouri,  500,000,  and  in  that  of 


36 

the  lower  Mississippi,  330,000,  giving  a  total  oi" 
1,210,000  miles  as  the  area  of  what  is  termed  the 
Mississippi  basin.  Most  if  not  all  of  these  vast 
streams  are  innavigable  but  by  steam  boats,  owing 
to  the  course  of  their  currents  and  other  circumstan- 
ces. These  then  are  the  latitudes  of  steam  boats,  which 
have  been  abandoned  in  some  parts  of  Europe,  as 
too  large  for  their  rivers,  and  too  expensive  for  their 
travelling. — In  less  than  ten  years  from  this  time, 
steam  boats  may  pass  from  the  great  lakes  of  the 
north-west  by  canals  to  the  Atlantic,  thence  to  the 
isthmus  of  Darien,  and  across  that  to  China  and  New 
Holland.  They  now  ply  like  ferry  boats  from  New 
York  to  Pensacola,  New  Orleans  and  Havanna,  with 
the  punctuality  and  security,  and  more  than  the  ac- 
commodation, of  the  best  land  carriage  of  Europe, 
Wherever  this  wonderful  invention  appears,  over- 
coming the  winds  and  waves  by  steam,  measuring 
trackless  ocean  distances  by  the  quadrant,  and  pro- 
tected from  lightning  by  the  rod,  it  displays  in  every 
one  of  these  accomplishments  the  genius  of  Ame- 
rica. 

In  the  ordinary  art  of  navigation,  the  construc- 
tion, equipment,  and  manipulation  of  vessels,  com- 
mercial and  belligerent,  America  is  also  conspicu- 
ous. The  merchant  vessels  of  the  United  States, 
manned  with  fewer  hands,  perform  their  voyages, 
generally,  in  one  third  less  time  than  those  of  the 
only  other  maritime  people  to  be  compared  with 
them.  And  without  referring  to  the  achievements  of 
the  American  navy  as  credentials  of  courage  or 
renown,  I  may  with  propriety  remark,  that  an  intel- 


37 

ligent  and  scientific  fabrication  and  application  of 
arms,  ammunition,  ships,  and  all  the  materials  of 
maritime  warfare,  are  unquestionably  demonstrated 
by  their  success  in  it. 

The  mechanics,  artisans,  and  laborers  of  this 
country  are  remarkable  for  a  disposition  to  learn. 
Asserted  European  superiority  has  been  of  great 
advantage  to  America  in  preventing  habitual  re- 
pugnance to  improvement,  so  common  to  all  man- 
kind, especially  the  least  informed  classes.  Supe- 
rior aptitude,  versatility  and  quickness  in  the  han- 
dicrafts, are  the  consequences  of  this  disposition  of 
our  people.  A  mechanic  in  Europe  is  apt  to  con- 
sider it  almost  irreverent,  and  altogether  vain  to 
suppose  that  any  thing  can  be  done  better  than  as 
he  was  taught  to  do  it  by  his  father  or  master. 
A  house  or  ship,  is  built  in  much  less  time  here  than 
there.  From  a  line  of  battle  ship,  or  a  steam  engine, 
to  a  ten  penny  nail,  in  every  thing,  the  mechani- 
cal genius  displays  itself  by  superior  productions. 
The  success  of  a  highly  gifted  American  mechani- 
cal genius  now  in  England,  seems  to  be  owing  in 
part  to  his  adapting  his  improvements,  by  a  happy 
ingenuity,  to  the  preservation  of  machinery,  for 
which  several  English  mechanics  have  been  en- 
riched and  ennobled,  but  which  would  have  been 
superseded  as  useless  had  it  not  been  thus  rescued. 

If  a  ship,  a  plough  and  a  house  be  taken  as  sym- 
bols of  the  primary  social  arts  of  navigation,  agri- 
culture and  habitation,  we  need  not  fear  com- 
parisons with  other  people  in  any  one  of  them. 
In  the  intellectual  use  of  the  elements,  the  com- 


binations  and  improvements  of  the  earth  and  its 
products,  of  water,  of  air,  and  of  fire,  no  greater 
progress  has  been  made  in  Europe  within  this  cen- 
tury than  in  the  United  States.  The  houses,  ships, 
carriages,  tools,  utensils,  manufactures,  implements 
of  husbandry,  conveniences,  comforts,  the  whole 
circle  of  social  refinement,  are  always  equal,  mostly 
superior  here  to  those  of  the  most  improved  nations. 
I  do  not  speak  of  mere  natural  advantages,  of  being 
better  fed,  more  universally  housed  and  more  com- 
fortably clothed,  than  any  oiher  people ;  but  ex- 
cepting the  ostentatious,  and  extravagant,  if  not  de- 
generate and  mischievous,  luxuries  of  a  few  in  the 
capitals  of  Europe  merely  ;  looking  to  the  general 
average  of  civilisation,  where  does  it  bespeak  more 
mind  or  display  greater  advancement?  Internal 
improvements,  roads,  bridges,  canals,  water-works, 
and  all  the  meliorations  of  intercourse,  have  been 
as  extensively  and  as  expensively  made  within  the 
last  ten  years  in  the  United  States,  as  in  probably 
any  other  country  ;  notwithstanding  the  sparseness 
of  a  population,  of  which  scarcely  half  a  million  is 
concentrated  in  cities,  and  a  slender  capital.  Five 
thousand  post  offices  distribute  intelligence  through- 
out the  United  States  with  amazing  celerity  and 
precision  over  eighty  thousand  miles  of  post  roads. 
The  mail  travels  twenty-one  thousand  miles  every 
day,  compassing  eight  millions  of  miles  in  a  year. 
There  are  twelve  thousand  miles  of  turnpike  roads. 
Our  facilities  and  habits  of  intercourse  are  unequal- 
led in  Europe :  almost  annihilating  the  obstacles 
of  space.  Within  two  years  from  this  time,  when 


29 

all  the  great  canals  now  in  progress  shall  be  com- 
pleted, an  internal  navigation  often  thousand  miles 
will  belt  this  country  from  the  great  western  valley 
to  the  waters  of  the  Hudson  and  the  Chesapeake. 
The  New  York  canal  and  the  Philadelphia  water- 
works are  not  surpassed,  if  equalled,  by  any  simi- 
lar improvements  in  Europe  within  the  period  of 
their  construction. 

The  polite  arts,  painting,  engraving,  music, 
sculpture,  architecture,  the  arts  of  recreation,  amuse- 
ment, and  pageantry,  flourish  most  in  the  seats  of 
dense  population.  Few  of  them  thrive  without  the 
forcing  of  great  capitals,  the  reservoirs  of  the  refine- 
ments of  ancient,  sometimes  declining,  empire. 
Architecture  is  an  art  of  state,  whose  master  works 
are  reserved  for  seats  of  goverment.  The  public 
edifices  of  Edinburgh  or  Liverpool,  for  instance,  or 
those  erected  at  any  other  provincial  town  within 
the  last  twenty  years,  bear  no  comparison  to  the 
costly  and  magnificent  capitol,  built,  burnt,  and  re- 
built, within  that  period  at  Washington.  Indeed, 
I  believe  that  there  are  no  public  buildings  which 
have  been  constructed  at  London  during  this  cen- 
tury in  so  expensive  and  splendid  a  style.  The 
Halls  of  the  Senate,  and  of  the  Representatives  at 
Washington,  are  in  the  relation  of  contrast  with  the 
Houses  of  Commons  and  the  Lords  in  London,  as 
to  magnitude,  magnificence  and  accommodation. 
And,  it  I  am  not  mistaken,  the  only  historical  paint- 
ings of  national  events,  which  have  ever  been  paid 
for  by  legislative  appropriation,  are  those  executed 
by  an  American  artist  for  the  walls  of  the  capitol. 
E 


30 


To  these  imperfect  views  of  education,  literature> 
science,  and  the  arts,  I  will  add  sketches  of  the 
American  mind,  as  developed  in  legislation,  juris- 
prudence, the  medical  profession  and  the  church  ; 
which,  in  this  country,  may  be  considered  as  the 
other  cardinal  points  of  intellectual  exercise. 

Representation  is  the  great  distinction  between 
ancient  and  modern  government.  Representation 
and  confederation  distinguish  the  politics  of  Ameri- 
ca, where  representation  is  real  and  legislation  pe- 
rennial. Thousands  of  springs,  gushing  from  every 
quarter,  eddy  onward  the  cataract  of  representative 
democracy,  from  primary  self- constituted  assem- 
blies, to  the  State  Legislatures,  and  the  national 
Congress,  Three  thousand  chosen  members  re- 
present these  United  States,  in  five  and  twenty 
Legislatures.  There  are,  moreover,  innumerable 
voluntary  associations  under  legislative  regulations 
in  their  proceedings.  I  am  within  bounds  in  as- 
serting, that  several  hundred  thousand  persons  as- 
semble in  this  country  every  year,  in  various  spon- 
taneous convocations,  to  discuss  and  determine 
measures  according  to  parliamentary  routine.  From 
bible  societies  to  the  lowest  handicraft  there  is  no 
impediment,  but  every  facility,  by  law,  to  their  or- 
ganisation :  And  we  find  not  only  harmless  but 
beneficial,  those  various  self-created  associations, 
which  in  other  countries  give  so  much  trouble  and 
alarm.  It  is  not  my  purpose  to  consider  the  politi- 
cal influences  of  these  assemblies,  nor  even  their 
political  character.  But  their  philosophical  effect 
on  the  individuals  composing  them,  is  to  sharpen 


31 

their  wits,  temper  their  passions,  and  cultivate  their 
elocution  :  While  this  almost  universal  practice  of 
political  or  voluntary  legislation,  could  hardly  fail 
to  familiarise  a  great  number  of  persons  with  its 
proprieties.  The  mode  of  transacting  business  is 
nearly  the  same  in  them  all,  from  the  humblest  de- 
bating club  to  Congress  in  the  capitol.  Legislation 
in  the  United  States  is  better  ordered,  more  de- 
liberative, decorous,  and  dignified,  much  less  tumul- 
tuous or  arbitrary  and  more  eloquent  than  in  Europe. 
Continual  changes  of  the  political  representatives,  af- 
ford not  less  than  ten  thousand  individuals  spread 
throughout  the  United  States,  practically  familiar 
with  the  forms  and  principles  of  legislation,  who, 
through  the  vivid  medium  of  a  free  press,  constitute, 
as  it  were,  an  auditory  greatly  superior  to  that  of  any 
other  nation.  A  large  proportion  of  this  great 
number  of  practical  legislators,  is  qualified  by  the 
habits  of  discussion  incident  to  such  employment, 
and  perfect  freedom,  to  deliver  their  sentiments  in 
public  speaking  ;  which,  being  in  greater  request, 
of  greater  efficacy,  and  at  greater  liberty  in  Ameri- 
ca than  in  Europe,  is  naturally  more  prevalent  and 
powerful  here  than  there.  It  is  a  striking  view  of 
the  ideas  of  legislation  in  Europe,  that  within  the 
last  thirty  years  France  and  Spain  have  waged  de- 
structive wars  for  legislatures,  consisting  of  single 
assemblies ;  a  constitution,  which  in  America, 
would  not  be  thought  worth  so  much  bloodshed. 

The  much  abused  French  revolution,  has  given 
to  that  country  a  Legislature  of  two  houses,  and  a 
press  of  considerable  freedom.  But  the  peers  are 


32 

lost  in  the  secrecy  of  their  sessions :  and  the  de- 
puties am  hardly  be  called  a  deliberative  assem- 
bly. Few  speak,  inasmuch  as  most  of  the  orations 
are  read  from  a  pulpit :  and  still  fewer  listen, 
amidst  the  tumults  that  agitate  the  whole  body.  To 
crown  these  frustrations  of  eloquent  debate,  when 
it  becomes  intense  and  critical,  as  it  must  be,  to  do 
its  offices,  the  proceedings  are  sometimes  closed 
by  an  armed  force,  marched  in  to  seize  and  expel 
an  obnoxious  orator.  This  is  certainly  not  the 
philosophy  of  legislation. 

In  Great  Britain,  an  excessive  number  is  crowded 
into  an  inconvenient  apartment,  where  but  few  at- 
tempt to  speak,  and  few  can  be  brought  to  listen  : 
and  where  both  speakers  and  hearers  are  disturbed 
by  tumultuous  shouts  and  unseemly  noises,  not,  ac- 
cording to  our  ideas,  consonant  with  either  eloquent 
or  deliberative  legislation.  In  theory,  the  House  of 
Commons  contains  nearly  700  members  :  in  prac- 
tice the  most  important  lau  s  are  debated  and  en- 
acted by  sixty  or  fifty.  Owing  to  the  want  of  per- 
sonal accommodation,  when  the  house  is  crowded, 
its  divisions  to  be  counted  are  attended  with  great 
confusion.  Most  of  the  bills  are  drafted,  not  by 
members,  but  by  clerks  hired  for  that  purpose :  to 
which  is  owing  much  of  the  inordinate  tautology 
and  technicality  of  modern  acts  of  Parliament.  In 
theory  and  principle  there  is  no  audience,  and  in 
fact,  bystanders  are  not  permitted  but  occasionally, 
under  inconvenient  restrictions.  Reports  and  pub- 
lications of  the  debutes  are  unauthorised,  and  of 
course  imperfect,  notwithstanding  the  exploits  of 


33 

stenography.  Although  Parliament  is  omnipotent, 
yet  a  member  may  not  publish  abroad  what  he  says 
in  his  place,  without  incurring  ignominious  punish- 
ment as  a  libeller:  which  punishment  was  actually 
inflicted  not  long  ago  on  a  peer,  proceeded  against 
by  information,  for  that  offence.  In  France,  the 
press  is,  in  this  respect,  freer  than  in  England.  The 
publication  of  speeches  in  the  Legislature  is  consi- 
dered an  inviolable  right,  which,  among  all  the  re- 
vocations of  the  present  government,  has  never  been 
molested  or  called  in  question.  By  a  perversion 
of  the  hours,  unknown,  I  believe,  in  any  other 
country  or  age,  most  of  the  business  of  Parliament 
is  done  in  the  dead  of  night,  to  which,  probably, 
many  of  the  irregularities  now  mentioned  are  as- 
cribable.  The  great  popular  principles  which 
have  preserved  the  British  Parliament,  while 
every  other  similar  attempt  in  Europe  has  fail- 
ed, or  nearly  so,  and  its  brilliant  political  per- 
formances, have  recommended  it  to  admiration, 
notwithstanding  these  disadvantages  ;  and  in- 
deed sanctioned  them  as  part  of  the  system. 
But  unprejudiced  judgment  must  allow,  that  all 
these  are  imperfections  which  have  no  place  in 
Congress.  Hence  it  is,  that  there  are  not  now,  and 
probably  never  were  at  any  one  time,  more  than 
two  or  three  members  of  Parliament  actuated  by 
the  great  impulses  of  oratory :  and  that  the  talent 
of  extemporaneous  and  useful  eloquence  always  has 
been  much  more  common  in  Congress.  Burke's 
inimitable  orations,  which  all  ages  will  read  with 
t,  were  delivered  to  an  empty  hou*' 


31 

member,  now  a  peer,  himself  one  of  the  most  elo- 
quent men  of  England,  \vhose  political  and  per- 
sonal ties  bound  him  particularly  to  remain  during 
the  delivery  of  one  of  these  master-pieces,  after  near- 
ly every  body  else  had  withdrawn,  actually  crawled 
out  of  the  house  to  escape  unnoticed  from  an  intole- 
rable scene.  Johnson,  the  editor  of  Chatham's  fam- 
ous speeches,  in  a  number  of  the  Rambler,  treats 
the  graces  of  eloquence  with  elaborate  ridicule  and 
contempt ;  and  Hume,  in  his  Essay  on  Eloquence, 
and  Blair,  in  his  Lectures  on  Rhetoric,  acknowledge 
that  they  are  not  characteristics  of  British  oratory. 
The  printed  speeches  of  England  are  among  the  finest 
specimens  of  the  art  of  composition ;  but  it  is  notori- 
ous that  in  parliament  and  at  the  bar  the  most  celebra- 
ted speeches  avail  nothing  with  those  to  whom  they 
are  addressed  ;  and  eloquence,  in  the  pulpit  of  the 
established  church  is,  I  believe,  a  thing  unheard  of. 
The  talent  of  effective  oratory  is  much  more  com- 
mon in  America,  where  laws  are  made,  controver- 
sies are  settled,  and  proselytes  are  gained,  by  it, 
every  day.  An  eloquent  professor  or  lecturer,  in 
England,  is  very  rare,  if  there  be  any  such.  While 
it  is  well  known  that  the  medical  school  of  Phila- 
delphia owes  its  success,  in  part,  to  the  mere  elo- 
quence of  its  lecturers.  Crowds  of  listeners  are 
continually  collected  in  all  parts  of  this  country  to 
hear  eloquent  speeches  and  sermons.  The  legis- 
lature, the  court  house,  and  the  church,  are  throng- 
ed with  auditors  of  both  sexes,  attracted  by  that 
talent  which  was  the  intense  study  and  great  power 
of  the  ancient  orators.  Thought,  speech,  and  ac- 
tion, must  be  perfectly  free  to  call  forth  the  utmost 


35 

powers  of  this  mighty  art.  It  requires  difficulties  ; 
but  it  needs  hopes.  Its  temples  in  free  countries 
are  innumerable.  When  its  rites  are  adminis- 
tered the  most  divine  of  human  unctions  searches 
the  marrow  of  the  understanding  ;  the  orator  is 
inspired,  the  auditor  is  absorbed,  by  the  occasion. 
Annual  sessions  of  five  and  twenty  legislatures 
multiply  laws,  which  produce  a  numerous  bar,  in 
all  ages  the  teeming  offspring  of  freedom.  Their 
number  in  the  Unired  States  has  been  lately  com- 
puted at  six  thousand  ;  which  is  probably  an  un- 
der estimate.  American  lawyers  and  judges  ad- 
here uith  professional  tenacity  to  the  laws  of  the 
mother  country.  The  absolute  authority  of  recent 
English  adjudications  is  disclaimed  :  but  they  are 
received  with  a  respect  too  much  bordering  on  sub- 
mission. British  commercial  law,  in  many  respects, 
inferior  to  that  of  the  continent  of  Europe,  is  becom- 
ing the  law  of  America.  The  prize  law  of  Great  Bri- 
tain was  made  that  of  the  U.  States  by  judicial  legis- 
lation during  flagrant  war  between  the  two  countries. 
The  homage  lately  paid  by  the  English  prime 
minister  to  the  neutral  doctrines  proclaimed  by  the 
American  government,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
French  revolution,  which  declares  them  worthy 
the  imitation  of  all  neutral  nations,  may  teach  us 
that  the  American  state  papers  contain  much  better 
principles  of  international  jurisprudence  than  the  pas- 
sionate and  time-serving,  however  brilliant,  sophisms 
of  the  British  admiralty  courts.  On  the  other 
hand,  English  jurisprudence,  while  silently  availing 
itself  of  that  of  all  Europe,  and  adopting  without 


36 


owning  it,  has  seldom  if  ever  made  use  of  an  Ame- 
rican law  book,  recommended  by  the  same  lan- 
guage, system,  and  subject  matter.  American 
translations  of  foreign  jurists,  on  subjects  in  which 
the  literature  of  English  law  is  extremely  deficient, 
appear  to  be  less  known  in  England  than  transla- 
tions of  the  laws  of  China.  This  veneration  on 
our  part,  and  estrangement  on  theirs,  are  infirmities 
characteristic  of  both.  Our  professional  bigotry 
has  been  counteracted  by  penal  laws  in  some  of 
the  States  against  the  quotation  of  recent  British 
precedents,  as  it  was  once  a  capital  often ce  in  Spain 
to  cite  the  civil  law,  and  as  the  English  common 
law  has  always  repelled  that  excellent  code  from 
its  tribunals.  I  cannot  think,  with  the  learned  edi- 
tor of  the  Law  Register,  that  late  English  law  books 
are  a  dead  expense  to  the  American  bar ;  or  that, 
in  his  strong  phrase,  scarcely  an  important  case  is 
furnished  by  a  bale  of  their  reports.  But  I  deplore 
the  colonial  acquiescence  in  which  they  are  adopt- 
ed, too  often  without  probation  or  fitness.  The  use 
and  respect  of  American  jurisprudence  in  Great 
Britain  will  begin  only  when  we  cease  to  prefer 
their  adjudications  to  our  own.  By  the  same  means 
we  shall  be  relieved  from  disadvantageous  restric- 
tions on  our  use  of  British  wisdom;  and  our  system 
will  acquire  that  level  to  which  it  is  entitled  by  the 
education,  learning,  and  purity  of  those  by  whose 
administration  it  is  formed. 

In  their  national  capacity,  the  United  States  have 
no  common  law,  but  all  the  original  States  are  go- 
verned by  that  of  England,  with  adaptations.  In 


37 

one  of  the  new  States,  in  which  the  French,  Spanish, 
and  English  laws,  happen  to  be  all  naturalised,  an 
attempt  at  codification  from  all  these  stocks  is  mak* 
ing,  under  legislative  sanction.  In  others,  possibly 
all  of  the  new  States,  which  have  been  carved  out  of 
the  old,  a  great  question  is  in  agitation  whether  the 
English  common  law  is  their  inheritance.  Being 
a  scheme  of  traditional  precepts  and  judicial  prece- 
dents, that  law  requires  continual  adjudications,with 
their  reasons  at  large,  to  explain,  replenish,  and  en. 
force  it.  Of  these  reports,  as  the}'  are  termed,  no 
less  than  sixty  four,  consisting  of  more  than  two 
hundred  volumes,  and  a  million  of  pages,  have  al- 
ready been  uttered  in  the  United  States ;  most  of 
them  in  the  present  century  ;  and  in  a  ratio  of  great 
increase.  The  camel's  load  of  cases,  which  is  said 
to  have  been  necessary  to  gain  a  point  of  law  in  the 
decline  of  the  Roman  empire,  is  therefore  already 
insufficient  for  that  purpose  in  the  American.  Add 
to  which,  an  American  lawyer's  library  is  incom- 
plete without  a  thousand  volumes  of  European  le- 
gists, comprehending  the  most  celebrated  French, 
Dutch,  Italian,  and  German  treatises  on  natural, 
national,  and  maritime  law,  together  with  all  the 
English  chancery  and  common  law.  I  have  heard 
of  an  American  lawyer  of  eminence  whose  whole 
property  is  said  to  consist  in  a  large  and  expensive 
law  library. 

Notwithstanding  this  mass  of  literature,  the  law 
has  been  much  simplified  in  transplantation  from 
Europe  to  America  :  and  its  professional  as  well  as 
political  tendency  is  still  to  further  simplicity.  The 


brutal,  ferocious,  and  inhuman  laws  of  the  feudists> 
as  they  were  termed  by  the  civilians,  (I  use  their 
own  phrase,)  the  arbitrary  rescripts  of  the  civil  law, 
and  the  harsh  doctrines  of  the  common  law,  have 
all  been  melted  down  by  the  genial  mildness  of  Ame- 
rican institutions.  Most  of  the  feudal  distinctions  be- 
tween real  and  personal  property,  complicated  te- 
nures and  primogeniture,  the  salique  exclusion  of  fe- 
males, the  unnatural  rejection  of  the  half-blood,  and 
ante-nuptial  offspring,  forfeitures  for  crimes,  the  pe- 
nalties of  alienage,  and  other  vices  of  European 
jurisprudence,  which  nothing  but  their  existence 
can  defend,  and  reason  must  condemn,  are  either 
abolished,  or  in  a  course  of  abrogation  here.  Cog- 
nisance of  marriage,  divorce,  and  posthumous  ad- 
ministration, taken  from  ecclesiastical,  has  been 
conferred  on  the  civil  tribunals.  Voluminous  con- 
veyancing and  intricate  special  pleading,  among 
the  costliest  mysteries  of  professional  learning  in 
Great  Britain,  have  given  place  to  the  plain  and 
cheap  substitutes  of  the  old  common  law.  With  a 
like  view  to  abridge  and  economise  litigation,  co- 
ercive arbitration,  or  equivalents  for  it,  have  been 
tried  by  legislative  provision;  jury  trial,  the  great  safe- 
guard of  personal  security,  is  nearly  universal,  and 
ought  to  be  quite  so,  for  its  in  valuable  political  influ- 
ences. It  not  only  does  justice  between  the  litigant 
parties,  but  elevates  the  understanding  and  enlightens 
the  rectitude  of  all  the  community.  Sanguinary  and 
corporal  punishments  art  yielding  to  the  interesting 
experiment  of  penitential  confinement.  Judicial 
official  tenure  is  mostly  independent  of  legislative 


39 

interposition,  and  completely  of  executive  influence. 
The  jurisdiction  of  the  courts,  is  far  more  exten- 
tensive  and  elevated  than  that  of  the  mother  coun- 
try. They  exercise,  among  other  high  political 
functions,  the  original  and  remarkable  power  of  in- 
validating statutes,  by  declaring  them  unconstitu- 
tional :  an  ascendancy  over  politics  never  before  or 
elsewhere  asserted  by  jurisprudence,  which  autho- 
rises the  weakest  branch  of  a  popular  government 
to  annul  the  measures  of  the  strongest.  If  popular 
indignation  somethnes  assails  this  authority,  it  has 
seldom  if  ever  been  able  to  crush  those  who  have 
honestly  exercised  it ;  and  even  if  it  should,  though 
an  individual  victim  might  be  immolated,  his  very 
martyrdom  would  corroborate  the  system  for  which 
he  suffered.  Justice  is  openly,  fairly,  and  purely 
administered,  freed  from  the  absurd  costumes  and 
ceremonies  which  disfigure  it  in  England.  Judi- 
cial appointment  is  less  influenced  by  politics  ;  and 
judicial  proceedings  more  independent  of  political 
considerations. 

The  education  for  the  bar  is  less  technical,  their 
practice  is  more  intellectual,  the  vocation  is  rela- 
tively at  least  more  independent  in  the  United 
States,  than  in  Great  Britain.  Here,  as  there,  it  is 
a  much  frequented  avenue  to  political  honours.  All 
the  chief  justices  of  the  United  States  have  filled 
eminent  political  stations,  both  abroad  and  at  home. 
Of  the  five  Presidents  of  the  United  States,  four 
were  lawyers ;  of  the  several  candidates  at  pre- 
sent for  that  office,  most,  if  not  all,  are  lawyers. 
But  without  any  public  promotion,  American  so- 


ciety  has  no  superior  to  the  man  who  is  advanced 
in  any  of  the  liberal  professions.  Hence  there  are 
more  accomplished  individuals  in  professional  life 
here,  than  where  this  is  not  the  case.  Under  other 
governments,  patronage  will  advance  the  unworthy, 
and  power  will  oppress  the  meritorious.  Even  in 
France,  where  there  are,  and  always  have  been  law- 
yers of  great  and  just  celebrity,  we  sometimes  see 
that  for  exerting  the  noblest,  and,  in  free  countries, 
the  most  common  duties  of  their  profession,  for  re- 
sisting the  powerful  and  defending  the  weak,  they 
are  liable  to  irresponsible  arrest,  imprisonment,  and 
degradation,  without  the  succour  and  sanctuary  of 
a  free  press,  and  dauntless  public  sympathy.  In 
Great  Britain,  it  is  true,  there  is  no  such  apprehen- 
sion to  deter  them  :  and  equally  true,  that  profes- 
sional, as  well  as  political  dignities,  are  free  to  all 
candidates.  But  the  ascendancy  of  rank,  the  con- 
tracted divisions  of  intellectual  labour,  the  techni- 
cality of  practice,  combine  with  other  causes  to 
render  even  the  English  individuals,  not  perhaps 
inferior  lawyers,  but  suborbinate  men. 

British  jurisprudence  itself,  too,  that  sturdy  and 
inveterate  common  law,  to  which  Great  Britain 
owes  many  of  the  great  popular  conservative  prin- 
ciples cf  her  constitution — even  these  have  been 
impaired  by  long  and  terrible  wars,  during  which, 
shut  up  within  their  impregnable  island,  the  offspring 
of  Alfred  and  of  Edward,  infusing  their  passions, 
their  politics,  and  their  prejudices  into  their  laws, 
have  wrenched  them  to  their  occasions.  The  dis- 
tinguishing attributes  and  merits  of  the  common 


law  are,  that  it  is  popular  and  mutable ;  takes  its 
doctrines  from  the  people,  and  suits  them  to  their 
views.  While  the  American  judiciary  enforces 
ihis  system  of  jurisprudence,  may  it  never  let  wars, 
or  popular  passions,  or  foreign  influences,  impair  its 
principles. 

There  are  about  ten  thousand  physicians  in  the 
United  States,  and  medical  colleges  for  their  edu- 
cation in  Massachusetts,  Rhode-Island,  Connecti- 
cut, New  York,  Pennsylvania,  Virginia  and  Ohio. 
There  are  also  two  medical  universities  in  the  state 
of  New  York,  one  in  Pennsylvania,  one  in  Mary- 
land, one  in  Massachusetts,  and  one  in  Kentucky  ; 
containing  altogether  about  twelve  hundred  stu- 
dents. Under  the  impulses  of  a  new  climate  and 
its  peculiar  distempers,  the  medical  profession  has 
been  pursued  and  its  sciences  developed  with  great 
zeal  and  success  in  this  country  ;  whose  necessities 
have  called  forth  a  bolder  and  more  energetic  treat- 
ment of  diseases,  more  discriminating  and  philoso- 
phical, as  well  as  decisive  and  efficient ;  a  more 
scientific  assignment  of  their  causes,  and  ascertain- 
ments of  their  nature.  Many  medical  errors  and 
prejudices,  now  abandoned  in  Europe,  were  first  re- 
futed here.  What  is  justly  termed  a  national  cha 
racter,  has  been  given  to  the  medical  science  of 
America,  and  American  medical  literature  is  cir- 
culated and  read  in  Europe,  where  several  Ameri- 
can medical  discoveries  and  improvements  have 
been  claimed  as  European.  Anatomy,  the  most 
stationary  of  the  medical  sciences,  is  ardently  culti- 
vated, and  has  been  advanced  by  discoveries  in  the 


43 

American  schools.  Valuable  contributions  have 
been  made  to  physiology,  and  more  rational  views 
inculcated  of  animal  economy.  An  American  dis- 
covery in  chemistry  has  distinguished  its  authot 
throughout  Europe :  Where  the  achievements  of 
this  master  spirit  of  sciences,  while,  to  be  sure  they 
leave  ours  behind,  yet  encourage  it  to  an  applica- 
tion full  of  promise.  It  is  a  merit  of  the  American 
schools,  at  least,  to  have  accurately  defined  the 
bounds  of  chemistry  and  physiology.  Our  diver- 
sified soils  and  climates,  afford  inexhaustible  heal- 
ing and  balsamic  plants,  many  of  which  have  been 
adopted  into  the  materia  medica,  and  displayed  in 
publications  creditable  to  the  literature  and  some  of 
the  fine  arts,  as  well  as  the  science  of  this  country. 
And  the  bowels  of  this  continent  are  rich  with 
sanative  minerals,  some  of  which,  likewise,  have 
been  extracted  and  made  known  both  to  science  and 
by  literature.  Mr.  Cleaveland's  treatise  on  mine- 
ralogy is,  I  believe,  used  as  a  text  book  in  Great 
Britain. 

American  physicians  are  probably  unrivalled  in 
the  knowledge  and  use  of  what  are  termed  the 
heroic  remedies.  They  have  introduced  new  and 
rational  doctrines  respecting  the  operation  of  reme- 
dies ;  combatting  the  notion  of  their  reception  into 
the  circulation,  and  referring  it  to  the  principle  of 
sympathy.  They  deny  the  asserted  identity  of 
remedies ;  believing,  that  they  have  succeeded  in 
proving  an  essential  difference  in  their  operation, 
not  only  in  degree,  but  in  effect.  The  American 
improvements  in  Surgery  are  too  numerous,  and 


though  not  the  less  important,  too  minute  and  tech- 
nical, to  be  generalised  in  a  summary.  Its  appa- 
ratus, mechanism,  and  operations,  have  been  im- 
proved by  a  theory  and  practice  equal  in  science, 
skill  and  success,  to  any  in  the  world.  But  its 
greatest  melioration  is  philosophical.  The  founder 
of  most  of  the  improvements  in  surgery  alluded 
to,  deeming  its  most  skilful  operations,  but  imper- 
fections in  the  preserving  art,  reserves  them  for  its 
last  resort,  never  to  be  performed  till  all  means  of 
natural  cure  prove  abortive.  On  this  exalted  prin- 
ciple the  great  Hunter  taught  and  practised;  unit- 
ing humanity  and  philosophy  to  science  and  art ; 
a  benefactor,  whose  original  and  admirable  sug- 
gestions it  is  the  merit  of  American  physicians  and 
surgeons  to  have  introduced  into  their  practice  in 
this  country,  before  their  imputed  innovations  were 
reconciled  to  pre-conceived  opinions  in  his  own. 

Midwifery,  both  practical  and  theoretical,  has  also 
received  essential  improvements  in  the  American 
school,  some  of  which  have  been  declared  by  high 
authority  to  mark  an  asra  in  the  obstetric  practice. 
In  the  theory  and  practice  of  medicine,  the  im- 
provements are  too  many  and  important  for  my 
recital.  The  gastric  pathology,  the  prevailing 
treatment  and  theory  of  hydrokephalus,  and  of  drop- 
sies in  general,  the  boasted  European  practice  in 
marasmus,  the  cure  of  the  croup,  of  gout  by  evac- 
uations, the  arrest  of  malignant  erisipelas,  and  of 
mortification,  and  of  inflamation  of  the  veins;  in 
short,  a  long  list  of  remedial  systems,  which  might 
be  enumerated,  though  claimed  in  Europe,  belong 


to  America.  The  vaunted  suggestion  of  Europe, 
that  fever  originates  in  sympathetic  irritation,  and 
that  venesection  and  other  evacuations  are  requi- 
site in  the  primary  stages  of  it,  have  long  been  the 
established  doctrines  of  America,  where  they  were 
first  demonstrated.  American  medical  science 
and  skill  have  outstripped  those  of  the  rest  of  the 
world,  Europe  included,  in  the  character  and  treat- 
ment of  epidemics  and  pestilences.  In  this  great 
field,  Europe  has  done  little,  while  the  progress  of 
America  has  been  great.  Bigoted  to  antiquated 
notions  the  medical  science  of  the  old  world  has 
stagnated  for  centuries  in  prejudices,  which  have 
been  expelled  in  the  new,  where  the  causes,  na- 
ture, laws,  and  treatment  of  these  destructive  visi- 
tations have  been  ascertained  and  systematised. 
English  critics  particularly  dwell  with  exultation  on 
their  supposed  late  triumphs  over  these  distem- 
pers. Divested  of  the  long  prevalent  notion  of  de- 
bility and  putrescency,  they  now  urge  depletion 
as  if  the  suggestion  were  their  own,  whereas  thirty 
years  have  elapsed  since  the  physicians  of  this 
country  were  in  the  full  employment  of  it. 

The  theory  and  practice  of  medicine,  the  fearless 
and  generous  resistance  of  pestilential  disease,  sug- 
gest a  recollection  of  a  late  medical  professor  here, 
whose  works  are  in  the  libraries  of  the  learned  in 
many  countries,  and  in  several  languages,  whose  fas- 
cinating manners  and  eloquent  lectures  largely  con- 
tributed to  the  foundation  of  a  flourishing  school,  whose 
zeal,  if  some  times  excessive,  was  characteristic  of 
genius,  and  the  pioneer  of  success  ;  whose  services, 


Jet  me  add,  as  a  patriot,  and  a  philantropist,  shed  a 
divine  lustre  on  his  career  as  a  physician.  The 
first  leading  man  to  lay  down  his  life  in  battle  in  the 
American  revolution,  was  an  eminent  physician. 
The  best  historian  of  that  period,  was  also  an  emi- 
nent physician  :  And  in  a  country,  which  knows  no 
grade  above  that  of  the  eminent  in  learning  and 
usefulness,  there  have  been,  and  there  are,  many 
others  of  this  profession  to  whom  more  than  pro- 
fessional celebrity  belongs.  They  frequently  unite 
political  with  professional  distinctions.  Many  of 
the  members  of  this  profession,  have  rilled  various 
stations  in  every  branch  of  our  government.  Many 
of  them  at  this  moment,  occupy  high  executive  and 
legislative  public  offices.  The  pernicious  and  de- 
grading system  which  subdivides  labour  infini- 
tesimally — a  system  useful  perhaps  for  pin-makers, 
but  most  injurious  in  all  the  thinking  occupations — 
has  no  countenance  in  America.  The  American 
physician  practices  pharmacy,  surgery,  midwifery ; 
and  is  cast  on  his  own  resources  for  success  in  all 
he  does  :  The  consequence  of  which  is,  that  he  is 
forced  to  think  more  for  himself,  and  of  course  to 
excel.  In  Europe,  successful  physicians  are  too 
often  made  so  by  favour  or  chance.  They  are, 
moreover,  the  luxuries  of  the  metropolis  and  a  few 
great  cities.  Throughout  the  interior  of  England, 
generally,  the  medical  attendant  is  an  uneducated 
apothecary,  whose  science  stops  at  the  compound- 
ing of  a  drug,  or  the  opening  of  a  vein.  Even  in 
London,  this  class  is  always  in  reserve  to  succeed 
the  preliminary  and  expensive  visits  of  the  doctor : 
G 


46 

whose  employment,  besides,  depends  too  much  on 
the  recommendation  of  these  subordinates.  In  this 
country,  medical  skill  is  much  more  generally  dis- 
tributed. Every  hamlet,  every  region  abounds 
with  educated  physicians,  whose  qualifications  to 
be  sure,  ultimately  depend  much  on  their  opportu- 
nities :  But  who,  at  least  for  the  most  part,  begin 
with  the  recommendations  of  diplomas. 

Perhaps  the  most  humane  discovery  in  modem 
medicine  is  vaccination ;  to  which  America  has  no 
claim:  though  superior  intelligence  here  has  given 
it  much  greater  effect,  than  among  the  ignorant 
populace  of  Europe.  The  doctrine  of  non-conta- 
gion in  pestilential  distempers,  should  it  be  esta- 
blished, must  also  enjoy  great  credit  as  a  triumph 
for  humanity.  The  most  distressing  prejudices 
concerning  contagion,  are  not  yet  extirpated  in  Eu- 
rope. I  am  not  authorised  to  consider  a  disbelief 
in  this  shocking  aggravation  of  any  malady,  as  a 
point  in  which  the  medical  profession  of  America 
is  quite  unanimous  with  respect  to  yellow  fever: 
but  a  foreign  physician,  who  lately  collected  their 
jinions,  ascertained  the  ratio  of  non-contagionists 
to  be  567  to  28  contagionists.  A  late  French  am- 
bassador in  this  country,  who  was  bred  a  physician, 
has  publicly  claimed  the  merit  of  the  discovery  of 
non-contagion  for  another  French  physician,  who 
was  in  practice  in  this  city  in  1793,  and  is  now  in  the 
service  of  the  king  of  France.  But  in  a  treatise  on 
the  yellow  fever  by  Dr.  Hillary,  published  sixty 
years  ago,  its  contagion  is  explicitly  denied  by  the 
unqualified  declaration,  that  '  it  has  nothing  of  a 


47 

pestilential  or  contagious  nature  in  it.'  That  this 
is  not  the  sentiment  prevalent  in  France,  would 
seem  to  be  inferrible  from  recent  events.  A  French 
army  was  stationed  at  the  foot  of  the  Pyrennees,  as 
a  sanitory  cordon,  to  prevent  the  passage  of  conta- 
gion over  those  lofty,  and  frost  crowned  mountains. 
Whatever  may  be  the  theories  or  reveries  of  a  few, 
therefore,  it  is  a  remarkable  proof  of  the  actual  state 
of  the  public  intelligence  on  this  subject,  not  only 
in  France,  but  throughout  Europe,  that  all  inquiries 
concerning  the  cause  of  this  apparently  warlike 
demonstration  were  silenced  by  assurances  that  its 
design  was  to  repel  contagious  disease:  under 
which  assertion  the  wisdom  of  Europe  rested,  till 
the  plans  thus  masked  were  ripe  for  execution. 

I  shall  conclude  with  some  views  of  the  Ameri- 
can church ;  which  I  hope  to  be  able  to  shew  is 
as  justly  entitled  to  that  distinctive  appellation  as 
the  church  of  Rome,  the  church  of  England,  the 
Gallican  church,  the  Greek  church,  or  any  others, 
to  theirs  respectively. 

It  is  the  policy  or  the  prejudice  of  governments, 
which  use  the  church  as  an  engine  of  state,  to  de*- \g 
cry  institutions  which  separate  them,  and  leave  re- 
ligion to  self-regulation.  They  are  accused  of  infi- 
delity and  immorality.  The  want  of  ecclesiastical 
respectability  is  inferred  from  its  want  of  political 
protection  and  influence.  These  Pagan  doctrines 
have  prevailed  where  ever  Christianity  has  been 
unknown.  They  were  Egyptian,  Grecian,  Ro- 
man ;  they  are  Mahometan.  But  they  cannot  en- 
dure the  light  of  reason  and  truth.  Whoever  reads 


48 

the  text  book  of  Christianity  must  be  convinced 
that  it  is  the  religion  of  self-government.  No  Eu- 
ropean dogma  is  more  unfounded  than  that  repub- 
licanism and  infidelity  are  coadjutors.  Intelligent 
men  in  the  United  States,  with  much  more  unani- 
mity and  sincerity  than  in  Europe,  believe  that 
without  religion  humanity  would  be  forlorn  and  bar- 
barous. And  in  no  country  are  those  ecclesiastical 
classes  and  cures,  which  have  formed  parts  of  the 
institutions  of  religion,  in  all  times,  better  establish- 
ed than  in  this.  In  estimating  the  progress  and  con- 
dition of  the  mind  in  America,  therefore,  I  have 
neither  disposition  nor  occasion  to  deny,  that  the 
condition  of  religion  is  one  of  the  best  tests  of  the 
general  intellectual  state.  Independently  of  their 
help  in  the  cure  of  souls,  the  clergy  have  always 
rendered  the  most  important  services  to  the  human 
understanding.  Learning  and  science  were  long 
in  their  exclusive  care.  In  those  periods  when  the 
mind  was  most  depressed,  the  church  was  the 
chancery  of  its  preservation.  To  it  we  owe  nearly 
all  the  best  relics  of  ancient  learning :  from  it,  we 
still  receive  much  of  our  education  ;  for  here,  as 
elsewhere,  most  of  our  teachers  are  ecclesiastics. 
It  is  therefore  a  very  interesting  inquiry  how  the 
church  and  its  ministers,  who  are  also  the  ministers 
of  education,  fare  in  any  community. 

Segregation  from  political  connection  and  tolera- 
tion are  the  cardinal  principles  of  the  American 
church.  On  the  continent  of  Europe,  toleration 
means,  where  it  is  said  to  exist,  catholic  supre- 
macy suffering  subordinate  protestantism.  In  the 


49 

united  kingdom  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  it 
means  a  protestant  hierarchy,  abetted  by  dissenters, 
excluding  catholics  from  political  privileges,  and 
subjecting  them  to  double  ecclesiastical  imposi- 
tions. France,  Italy,  Ireland,  and  Spain,  have  been 
desolated  by  contests  between  church  and  state. 
Toleration  has  won  at  least  part  of  these  bloody 
fields.  But  a  segregated  church  does  not  appear 
to  have  made  any  advance  in  Europe.  In  the 
United  States,  both  of  these  principles  are  not  only 
fundamental  political  laws,  but  ancient,  deep-seated 
doctrines,  whose  bases  were  laid  long  before  poli- 
tical sovereignty  was  thought  of,  when  Williams, 
Penn  and  Baltimore,  by  a  remarkable  coincidence, 
implanted  them  in  every  quarter,  and  in  every  creed. 
American  toleration,  means  the  absolute  inde- 
pendence and  equality  of  all  religious  denomina- 
tions. American  segregation,  means,  that  no  hu- 
man authority  can  in  any  case  whatever  control 
or  interfere  with  the  rights  of  conscience.  Ade- 
quate trial  of  these  great  problems,  not  less  momen- 
tous than  that  of  political  self-goverenment,  has 
proved  their  benign  solution.  Bigotry,  intolerance, 
blood  thirsty  polemics  waste  themselves  in  harm- 
less, if  not  useful,  controversy,  when  government 
takes  no  part.  We  enjoy  a  religious  calm  and  har- 
mony, not  only  unknown,  but  inconcievable,  in 
Europe.  We  are  continuaUy  receiving  accessions 
of  their  intolerance,  which  is  as  constantly  disarmed 
by  being  let  alone.  Our  schools,  families,  legis- 
latures, society  find  no  embarrassment  from  varie- 
ties of  creed,  which  in  Europe  would  kindle  the 
deadliest  discord. 


50 

That  these  consequences  are  not  the  fruits  of 
lukewarmness  and  disregard  to  religion,  remains  to 
be  shewn. 

I  shall  touch  but  lightly  on  the  dissenting  church, 
as  it  is  called  in  England  ;  not  because  its  condition 
in  the  United  States  is  not  worthy  of  regard,  and  a 
great  argument  for  my  object,  but  because  its  well 
known  prosperity  renders  it  almost  unnecessary  that 
I  should  dwell  on  any  details,  of  it.  Always  demo- 
cratic even  in  Europe,  no  reason  can  be  imagined 
why  it  should  not  thrive  in  the  aboriginal  republi- 
canism of  America,  the  natural  and  fruitful  soil  of 
spontaneous  religion.  Accordingly,  there  are  up- 
wards of  seven  hundred  congregational  churches  in 
the  New  England  States  alone,  and  nearly  that  num- 
ber of  clergymen  of  that  denomination,  including 
pastors,  unsettled  ministers,  and  licensed  preachers  : 
from  which  enumeration  I  exclude  the  Baptists  of 
that  quarter,  who  are  uniformly  of  the  congregation- 
al order  in  church  government.  There  is  a  theo- 
logical seminary  at  Andover,  in  Massachusetts, 
containing  about  one  hundred  and  fifty  students  in 
divinity.  At  Harvard  college,  there  is  a  theologi- 
cal professor  of  the  Anti-trinitarian  faith,  with  whom 
several  resident  graduates  commonly  study.  Of 
the  two  hundred  and  thirty  congregational  minis- 
ters of  Massachusetts,  about  seventy  are  Anti-trini- 
tarians.  In  Maine,  there  is  a  theological  seminary, 
with  two  professors,  and  about  forty  pupils.  Yale 
college  in  Connecticut,  has  a  theological  depart- 
ment attached  to  it,  in  which  there  are  three  pro- 
fessors, and  a  considerable  number  of  students.  In 


51 

Cornwall,  in  Connecticut,  there  is  also  a  Heathen 
mission  school,  in  which,  about  thirty  youths,  born 
in  India,  on  the  Pacific  ocean,  and  the  western 
wilds  of  this  continent,  or  other  heathen  places,  are 
educated  with  special  reference  to  ministerial  du- 
tie4-  in  their  respective  birth  places. 

The  Presbyterian  church  in  the  United  States,  in 
addition  to  the  congregational,  contains  about  nine 
hundred  ministers,  one  hundred  and  thirty  five  li- 
centiates, one  hundred  and  forty  seven  candidates, 
more  than  fourteen  hundred  churches,  and  last  year 
administered  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper  to 
an  hundred  thousand  communicants.  It  has  theo- 
logical seminaries  in  the  States  of  New  Jersey,  New 
York,  and  Tennessee :  And,  as  is  obvious  from 
these  indications,  is  established  on  broad  and  flour- 
ishing endowments. 

I  shall  also  very  summarily  touch  the  condition 
of  those  enthusiastic,  and,  fhr  the  most  part,  itine- 
rant churches,  which,  ever  since  their  first  example 
in  the  appearance  of  the  Franciscan  and  Dominican 
friars  of  the  thirteenth  century,  in  a  similar  manner 
and  on  similar  occasions,  have,  under  various  titles, 
interposed  their  austere  and  reviving  tenets,  into  the 
deserted  or  decaying  quarters  of  Christianity;  whose 
popular  and  rallying  doctrines  have  a  highly  bene- 
ficial influence  on  the  morals  of  the  community. 
The  Methodist  church  of  America  contains  three 
diccesses,  eleven  hundred  itinerant  clergy,  exclu- 
sively clerical,  and  about  three  thousand  stationary 
ministers,  who  attend  also  to  other  than  ecclesiasti- 
cal occupations.  They  reckon  twelve  conferences. 


52 

and  more  than  twenty  five  hundred  places  of  wor- 
ship. By  the  report  to  the  Baptist  convention, 
which  sat  in  June  last,  at  Washington,  the  places 
of  worship  of  that  persuasion  are  stated  at  more 
than  two  thousand  three  hundred;  and  they  reckon 
a  very  large  number  of  ministers.  There  are  three 
theological  seminaries  of  the  Baptist  church,  one  in 
New  England,  one  in  the  interior  of  the  State  of 
New  York,  and  one  at  the  city  of  Washington. 
There  were  likewise  two  theological  seminaries  of 
the  Methodist  church,  of  whose  services,  however, 
it  has  been  for  the  present  deprived  by  accidental 
circumstances.  It  is  a  remarkable  and  most  lau- 
dable characteristic  of  all  these  religious  denomina- 
tions that  their  means  are  applied  among  other 
beneficial  purposes,  always  liberally  to  that  of  edu- 
cation. 

The  Universalists  have  one  hundred  and  twenty 
preachers,  two  hundred  separate  societies,  and  eight 
periodical  publications.  The  Lutheran,  the  Dutch 
Reformed,  and  Associate  Reformed,  the  Moravians, 
the  Friends,  in  short,  almost  an  innumerable  roll  of 
creeds,  have  their  several  seminaries  of  education, 
their  many  places  of  worship,  numerous  clergy  or 
preachers,  and  every  other  attribute  of  secular,  as 
well  as  spiritual,  religion  in  prosperity. 

To  the  clergy  of  some  of  these  sects,  especially 
the  Presbyterian  and  Congregational,  the  American 
revolution  is  deeply  indebted  for  its  origin,  pro- 
gress, and  issue.  The  generous,  yet  jealous  princi- 
ples of  self-government,  proclaimed  as  the  motives 
of  that  event,  have  no  more  steadfast,  uniform,  or 


53 

jnvincible  adherents,  than  their  followers.  Pole- 
mical literature,  metaphysical  knowledge,  pulpit 
eloquence,  philological  learning,  invigorating  the 
mind,  and  giving  it  power  over  the  world,  are  su- 
peradded  to  the  laborious  and  self-denyed  lives  and 
pure  ministry  of  these  ecclesiastics.  The  dissen- 
ters in  England  form,  no  doubt,  a  body  of  learned 
and  zealous  divines  :  but  from  the  time  when  Eng- 
land first  sent  her  sons  to  New  England  to  learn 
and  teach  theology  to  the  present  day,  the  Ameri- 
can dissenting  church,  is,  at  least  equal  to  that  of 
the  mother  country  in  intelligence  and  influence, 
and  much  superior  in  eloquence. 

But  it  is  on  the  American  church  of  England  and 
the  American  church  of  Rome,  that  we  may  dwell 
with  most  complacency.  Here,  where  no  political 
predominance,  no  peculiar,  above  all,  no  mysteri- 
ous, inquisitorial,  arbitrary,  or  occult  polity,  no 
tythes,  no  titles,  peerage,  crown,  or  other  such 
appliances  sustain  the  ministry,  where  the  cro- 
sier is  as  plain  as  the  original  cross  itself,  and  the 
mitre  does  not  sparkle  with  a  single  brilliant  torn 
from  involuntary  contribution, — it  is  here,  I  venture 
to  say,  that  within  the  last  century,  the  church  of 
England  and  the  church  of  Rome  have  construct- 
ed more  places  of  worship,  (relatively  speaking,) 
endowed  more  diocesses,  founded  more  religious 
houses,  and  planted  a  stronger  pastoral  influence, 
than  in  any  other  part  of  the  globe.  It  is  in  the 
United  States  of  America,  under  the  power  of  Ame- 
rican religion  that  the  English  and  Roman  Catholic 
chuvches  are  flourishing. 
H 


54 

Until  the  revolution,  the  church  of  England  wat 
the  estabished  church  in  all  4he  American  colonies. 
In  Maryland  and  Virginia,  where  it  was  most  firmly 
seated,  a  sort  of  modus  or  composition  for  tythes 
was  assessed  by  law,  either  on  the  parishes  or  by 
the  polls.  In  Virginia  there  were  moreover  glebes 
annexed  to  the  parish  churches.  In  New  York, 
there  was  also  a  fund  taken  from  the  public  money, 
appropriated  to  the  few  parishes  established  there. 
Throughout  New  England,  Pennsylvania,  and  the 
other  colonies,  if  I  am  not  misinformed,  though  the 
church  of  England  was  the  national  church,  yet  it 
languished  in  great  infirmity,  having  no  other  sup- 
port than  the  pew  rents  and  voluntary  assessments 
which  now,  under  a  very  different  regimen,  supply 
adequate  resources  for  all  the  occasions  of  an  es- 
tablishment which  has  no  rich,  and  no  very  poor 
pastorates. 

The  whole  of  these  vast  regions,  by  a  gross  or- 
dinance of  colonial  misrule,  were  attached  to  the 
London  diocess.  Most  of  the  incumbents,  it  may 
be  supposed,  those  especially  supported  by  tythes, 
at  such  a  distance  from  the  diocesan,  were  supine 
and  licentious.  As  soon  as  the  revolution  put  a 
stop  to  their  stipends,  they  generally  ceased  to  offi- 
ciate :  and  in  Maryland  and  Virginia,  particularly, 
the  Methodists  and  Baptists  stepped  in  to  their  de- 
serted places.  The  crisis  for  the  church  of  Eng- 
land at  this  conjuncture,  was  vital.  Several  of  its 
ministers  at  first  joined  their  compatriots  for  the 
independence  declared.  But  few  endured  unto  the 
end  of  the  struggle.  When  the  enemy  were  in 


55 

possession  of  Philadelphia,  then  the  capital  of  the 
country,  where  Congress  sat,  and  that  inimitable 
assembly  was  driven  to  resume  its  deliberations 
at  the  village  of  Yorktovvn,  they  elected  for  their 
chaplain,  a  clergyman  of  the  church  of  England, 
who  had  been  expelled  his  home  in  this  city  by 
its  capture.  Every  ingenuous  mind  will  do  justice 
to  the  predicament  in  which  such  an  election  placed 
an  American  pastor  of  the  English  church.  The 
cause  of  independence,  to  which  he  was  attached 
was  in  ruin  ;  the  government  forced  from  its  seat, 
the  army  routed  and  disheartened,  the  country 
prostrate  and  nearly  subdued  by  a  triumphant 
enemy  in  undisputed  occupation  of  the  capital. 
The  chaplain  elected  by  Congress  under  such 
circumstances  proved  worthy  of  their  confidence. 
Without  other  attendant,  protection,  or  encour- 
agement, than  the  consciousness  of  a  good  cause, 
he  repaired  to  the  retreat  of  his  country's  ab- 
ject fortunes,  to  offer  daily  prayers  from  the 
bosom  of  that  immortal  assembly  which  never 
despaired  of  them,  to  the  almighty  providence, 
by  which  they  were  preserved  and  prospered. 
The  chaplain  of  Congress,  at  Yorktown,  has 
been  rewarded  for  those  days  of  trial.  Already, 
in  the  compass  of  his  own  life,  and  ministry,  he  is 
at  the  head  of  the  ten  bishoprics  into  which  the 
American  church  of  England  has  since  then  ex- 
panded in  the  United  States,  with  three  hundred  and 
fifty  clergymen,  about  seven  hundred  churches,  a 
theological  seminary,  and  every  other  assurance  of 


56 

substantial  prosperity.  Within  his  life  time  there  was 
but  one,  and  at  the  commencement  of  his  ministry 
but  three  episcopal  churches  in  Philadelphia,and  they 
in  jeopardy  of  the  desecration  from  which  they  were 
saved  by  his  patriotic  example  and  pious  influence. 
It  would  be  an  unjust  and  unacceptable  homage, 
however,  tohim,  not  to  declare  that  the  intrinsic  tem- 
perance and  resource  of  popular  government  mainly 
contributed  to  the  preservation  of  the  English 
church  in  America,  where  it  has  since  advanced 
far  more  than  in  the  mother  country,  during  the 
same  period,  and  where  it  is  probably  destined  to 
flourish  greatly  beyond  the  English  example.  Of 
this  there  can  be  no  doubt  if  it  thrives  henceforth 
as  it  has  done  heretofore:  for  under  the  presidency  of 
a  single  prelate,  still  in  the  effective  performance  of 
all  the  duties  of  a  good  bishop,  and  a  good  citizen, 
the  American  church  of  England,  withouta  particle 
of  political  support,  has,  as  we  have  seen,  extended 
itself.  Within  a  few  years  a  million  of  pounds  sterling 
were  appropriated  by  parliament,  on  the  special  re- 
commendation of  the  crown  of  Great  Britain,  for 
the  repair  and  construction  of  churches;  with 
views  doubtless  to  political  as  much  as  to  religious 
consequences.  I  venture  to  predict  that  within 
the  period  to  elapse  from,  that  appropriation  to  its 
expenditure,  a  larger  sum  of  money  will  have  been 
raised  in  the  United  States  by  voluntary  subscrip- 
tion, and  expended  for  similar  purposes  and  to 
greater  effect. 

The  Roman  catholic  church  grows  as  vigorously 


57 

as  any  other  in  the  soil  and  atmosphere  of  America. 
The  late  (first)  archbishop  of  that  church,  likewise 
adhered  with  unshaken  and  zealous  constancy  to 
the  cause  of  the  American  revolution  :  and  indeed, 
served  for  it  in  a  public  station.  His  illustrious 
relative  is  one  of  the  three  signers  of  a  charter, 
destined  to  have  more*. influence  on  mankind  than 
any  uninspired  writing,  u  ho  have  lived  to  enjoy  its 
developements  during  half  a  century;  in  which  pe- 
riod, all  North  and  South  America  have  been  re- 
generated, and  the  most  intelligent  portions  of  Eu- 
rope quickened  with  the  spirit  of  that  political 
-.scripture.  He  periled  a  million  of  dollars  when 
he  pledged  his  fortune  to  the  declaration  of  inde- 
pendence :  as  to  the  short  sighted,  the  patriot  priest 
jmight  have  seemed  to  risk  his  religion  when  he 
abjured  European  allegiance.  But  neither  of  them 
has  had  reason  to  regret  the  effects  of  self-govern- 
ment on  a  faith  of  which  they  have  both,  at  all 
times,  been  the  American  pillars  and  ornaments. 
From  a  mers  mission  in  1790,  the  Roman  catholic 
establishment  in  the  United  States,  has  spread  into 
an  extended  and  imposing  hierarchy  ;  consisting 
of  a  metropolitan  see,  and  ten  bishoprics,  con- 
taining between  eighty  and  a  hundred  churches, 
some  of  them  the  most  costly  and  splendid  ecclesi- 
astical edifices  in  the  country,  superintended  by  a- 
bout  one  hundred  and  sixty  clergymen.  The  remo- 
test quarters  of  the  U.  States  are  occupied  by  these 
flourishing  establishments;  from  the  chapels  at 
Damascotti  (in  Maine)  and  at  Boston,  to  those  of 
St.  Augustine  in  Florida,,  and  St.  Louis  in  Mis- 


58 

souri.  There  are  catholic  seminaries  at  Bardstovvu 
and  Frankfort  in  Kentucky,  a  catholic  clerical  se- 
minary in  Missouri,  catholic  colleges  at  St.  Louis 
and  New  Orleans,  where  there  is  likewise  a  catho- 
lic Lancasterian  school,  two  catholic  charity  schools 
at  Baltimore,  two  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  a 
catholic  seminary  and  college  at  Baltimore,  a  ca- 
tholic college  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  a  catholic 
seminary  at  Emmitsburg  in  Maryland,  a  catholic 
free  school  and  Orphans'  asylum  in  Philadelphia. 
These  large  contributions  to  education,  are  not, 
however,  highly  respectable  and  cultivated  as  many 
of  them  are,  the  most  remarkable  characteristics  of 
the  American  Roman  catholic  church.  It  is  a  cir- 
cumstance pregnant  with  reflections  and  results, 
that  the  Jesuits,  since  their  suppression  in  Europe, 
have  been  established  in  this  country.  In  1801, 
by  a  brief  of  pope  Pius  the  seventh,  this  society, 
with  the  concurrence  of  the  emperor  Paul,  was  es- 
tablished in  Russia  under  a  general  authorised  to 
resume  and  follow  the  rule  of  St.  Ignatius  of  Loy- 
ola ;  which  power  was  extended  in  1806,  to  the 
United  States  of  America,  with  permission  to 
preach,  educate  youth,  administer  the  sacraments, 
&c.  with  the  consent  and  approbation  of  the  ordi- 
dinary.  In  1807,  a  noviciate  was  opened  at  George- 
town college  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  which 
continued  to  improve  till  1 8 14,  u hen,  being  deemed 
sufficiently  established,  the  congregation  was  for- 
mally organised  by  a  papal  bull.  This  society  now 
consists  of  twenty-six  fathers,  ten  scholastics  in 
theology,  seventeen  scholarships  in  philosophy, 


59 

rhetoric,  and  belles  lettres,  fourteen  scholastics  in 
the  noviciate,  twenty-two  lay-brothers  out  of,  and 
lour  lay-brothers  in,  the  noviciate  ;  some  of  whom 
are  dispersed  throughout  the  United  States,  occu- 
pied in  missionary  duties,  and  the  cure  of  souls. 
This  statement  is  enough  to  prove  the  marvellous 
radication  of  the  strongest  fibres  of  the  Roman  Ca- 
tholic church  in  our  soil.  But  the  argument  does 
not  stop  here.  The  oldest  catholic  literary  esta- 
blishment in  this  country,  is  the  catholic  college  just 
mentioned,  which  was  founded  immediately  after 
the  revolution,  by  the  incorporated  catholic  clergy 
of  Maryland,  now  capable  of  containing  two  hun- 
dred resident  students,  furnished  with  an  extensive 
and  choice  library,  a  philosophical  and  chemical 
apparatus  of  the  latest  improvement,  and  professor- 
ships in  the  Greek,  Latin,  French  and  English  lan- 
guages, mathematics,  moral  and  natural  philoso- 
phy, rhetoric,  and  belles  lettres.  This  institution, 
I  have  mentioned,  was  put  in  1805,  under  the  di- 
rection of  the  society  of  Jesuits  :  and  that  nothing 
might  be  wanting  to  the  strong  relief  in  which  the 
subject  appears,  the  college  thus  governed,  was  by- 
act  of  Congress  of  the  United  States  of  America, 
raised  to  the  rank  of  a  University,  and  empowered 
to  confer  degrees  in  any  of  the  faculties.  Thus, 
since  the  suppression  of  the  order  of  Jesuits,  about 
the  time  of  the  origin  of  the  American  revolution, 
has  that  celebrated  brotherhood  of  propagandists 
been  restored  in  the  United  States,  and  its  principal 
and  most  operative  institution  organised  and  eleva- 
vated  by  an  act  of  our  national  Legislature. 


in  like  manner,  the  Sulpitian  monks  have  been 
incorporated  by  act  of  the  legislature  of  the  State 
of  Maryland,  in  the  administration  of  the  flour- 
ishing Catholic  seminary  at  Baltimore.  Still  more 
remains,  however,  to  be  made  known  :  For  so  si- 
lent and  unobtrusive  is  religious  progress,  when 
neither  announced  nor  enforced  by  political  power, 
that  it  is  probable,  that  many  of  these  curious  de- 
tails may  be  new  to  some  of  those  who  now  hear 
them  mentioned.  Those  religious  houses  and  re- 
treats, which  have  been  rended  from  their  ancient 
seats  in  so  many  parts  of  Europe — monasteries  and 
convents — are  sprouting  up  and  casting  their  un- 
cultivated fragrance  throughout  the  kindlier  glebes 
and  wilds  of  America.  Even  where  corruption 
and  abuse  had  exposed  them  to  destruction,  learn- 
ing turned  with  sorrow  from  the  abomination  of 
their  desolation,  and  charity  wept  over  the  downfall 
of  her  ancient  fanes.  But  here,  where  corruption 
and  abuse  can  hardly  exist  in  self  supported  reli- 
gious institutions — what  have  we  to  apprehend 
from  these  chaste  and  pious  nurseries  of  education 
and  alms  ?  What  may  we  not  hope,  on  the  con- 
trary, for  the  mind,  from  their  consecration  and  ex- 
tension ?  In  the  oldest  religious  house  in  America, 
that  of  the  female  Carmelites,  near  Port  Tobacco, 
in  Maryland,  the  established  number  of  inmates  is 
always  complete.  The  convent  of  St.  Mary's,  at 
Georgetown,  in  the  District  of  Columbia,  contains 
fifty  nuns,  having  under  their  care  a  day  school,  at 
which,  upwards  of  a  hundred  poor  girls  are  educa- 
ted. The  convent  of  the  Sisters  of  Charity  of  St. 


61 

Joseph,  incorporated  by  the  Legislature  of  Mary- 
land, at  Emmittsburg  in  that  State,  consists  of 
fifty-nine  sisters,  including  novices,  with  fifty-two 
young  ladies  under  their  tuition,  and  upwards  of 
forty  poor  children.  A  convent  of  Ursulines,  at 
Boston,  is  yet  in  its  infancy,  consisting  of  a  prioress, 
six  sisters,  and  two  novices,  who  undertake  to  in- 
struct those  committed  to  their  charge  in  every 
polite  accomplishment,  in  addition  to  the  useful 
branches  of  female  education.  The  Emmittsburg 
Sisters  of  Charity,  have  a  branch  of  their  convent 
for  the  benefit  of  female  orphan  children,  establish- 
ed in  the  city  of  New  York,  where  the  Roman 
Catholics  are  said  to  have  increased  in  the  last  twen- 
ty years,  from  300  to  20,000.  The  church  of  St. 
Augustine,  in  Philadelphia,  belongs  to  the  Au- 
gustine monks,  by  whom  it  was  built.  There  is 
also  a  branch  of  the  Emmittsburg  Sisters  of  Charity 
in  this  city,  consisting  of  several  pious  and  well  in- 
formed ladies,  who  superintend  the  education  of 
orphan  children.  The  Daughters  of  Charity,  have 
another  branch  in  Kentucky,  where  there  are,  like- 
wise, a  house  of  the  order  of  Apostolines,  lately  es- 
tablished by  the  Pope  at  Rome,  a  cloister  of  Lo- 
retto,  and  another  convent.  In  the  State  of  Mis- 
souri, there  is  a  convent  of  religious  ladies  at  the 
village  of  St.  Ferdinand,  where  a  noviciate  is  seated, 
of  five  novices  and  several  postulants,  with  a  thriv- 
ing seminary,  largely  resorted  to  by  the  young 
ladies  of  that  remote  region,  and  also  a  day  school 
for  the  poor.  In  New  Orleans,  there  is  a  convent 
ofUrsuline  nuns,  of  ancientand  affluent  endowment, 
T 


containing  fifteen  or  sixteen  professed  nuns,  and  a 
nun  her  of  novices  and  postulants.  The  ladies  of 
the  Heart  of  Jesus,  are  about  founding  a  second  es- 
tablishment for  education  at  Opelousas.  I  will  ter- 
minate these  curious,  I  hope  not  irksome,  particu- 
lars, by  merely  adding,  that  in  Maine  and  Ken- 
tucky, there  are  tribes  of  Indians  attached  to  the 
Roman  Catholic  worship,  whose  indefatigable  min- 
isters have  always  been  successful  in  reclaiming 
those  aborigines  of  this  continent.  Vincennes,  the 
chief  town  of  Indiana,  where  there  is  now  a  Ro- 
man Catholic  chapel,  was  once  a  station  of  the  Je- 
suits for  this  purpose. 

Upon  the  whole  I  do  not  think  that  we  can 
reckon  less  than  eight  thousand  places  of  worship, 
and  five  thousand  ecclesiastics  in  the  United  States, 
besides  twelve  theological  seminaries,  and  many 
religious  houses,  containing,  the  former,  about  five 
hundred,  and  the  latter  three  hundred  votaries  ;  all 
self-erected  and  sustained  by  voluntary  contribu- 
tion, and  nearly  all  within  the  last  half  century.  If 
this  unequalled  increase  of  churches  and  pastors, 
and  worshippers,  attests  the  prosperity  of  religion, 
we  may  rest  assured  of  its  welfare  without  tythesor 
political  support :  and  we  need  not  fear  its  decline 
from  the  ascendancy  of  republicanism. 

In  proving  the  existence  and  magnitude  of  the 
American  church,  I  have  incidentally,  I  hope  suffi- 
ciently, explained  its  character.  For  the  most  part 
well  educated,  well  informed,  and  well  employed, 
eloquent,  unpensioned,  self-sustained,  trusting  to 
their  own  good  works,  and  relying  on  no  court 


63 

favour  or  individual  interest  for  advancement,  ex- 
empt from  that  parasite  worldly-mindedness  which 
the  honest  Massillon,  even  when  preaching  before 
Louis  XIV.  denounced  as  the  canker  of  political 
religion,  the  American  clergy  are  necessarily  called 
upon  to  think,  to  read,  to  write,  to  preach,  and  offici- 
ate more  than  the  European.  Accordingly  the  divi- 
nity of  the  American  church,  if  I  am  not  mistaken, 
is  much  more  active  at  this  time,  and  its  literature 
more  efficient  than  that  of  England.  Indeed  it  is 
hardly  to  be  accounted  for,  that  with  the  great  in- 
ducements, means  and  opportunities  of  the  dignita- 
ries of  the  English  church,  the  mind  is  at  present  so 
little  benefited  by  their  contributions  to  its  enlarge- 
ment. I  by  no  means  design  to  speak  disrespectful- 
ly of  personages  of  whom  I  know  little  more  than 
their  titles  ;  nor  do  I  call  in  question  their  learning, 
their  piety,  or  even  their  partial  usefulness.  But 
assuredly  it  is  fair  to  infer  some  radical  defect 
in  the  system,  when  of  all  the  modern  English 
bench  of  bishops  and  arch- bishops  there  are  very 
few,  I  believe,  at  present  in  any  way  known  to  lite- 
rature, not  one  distinguished  for  eloquence,  and  on 
that  noble  theatre,  the  house  of  peers,  who  ever 
heard  of  their  performances?  Relying  on  political 
protection,  they  seem  to  have  lost  the  stimulus  which 
urges  their  American  brethren  to  incessant  labours 
for  the  furtherance  of  religion,  by  eloquent  sermons, 
by  contributions  to  clerical  literature,  and  by  the 
ardent  exercise  of  all  their  duties.  The  Roman 
Catholics  boast  of  numerous  converts  from  protest- 
antism in  Europe.  Where  is  the  spirit  of  Tillot- 


64 

son  and  Sherlock,  the  English  successors  of  the 
Chrysostoms  and  the  Bazils  ?  Not  in  England  at 
present.  The  works  of  the  great  fathers  of  the 
English  church,  those  wells  of  doctrine  as  of  lan- 
guage undefiled,  appear  to  be  much  more  likely  to 
be  replenished  and  perpetuatec}  in  America. 

In  this  review,  I  have  of  course  abstained  from 
all  polemic  and  various  other  delicate  considera- 
tions connected  with  it :  confining  myself  to  the 
actual  progress  of  religion  as  indicative  of  the  ten- 
dency of  the  mind  on  that  subject  in  this  country. 
Anti-trinitarians  and  Jesuits,  convents,  and  quakers, 
all  grow  and  thrive  together.  The  most  imposing 
Roman  catholic  cathedral,  and  a  considerable  Unita- 
rian church  are  built  within  the  sound  of  each 
others  service  ;  and  neither  the  intelligence  nor  the 
tranquillity  of  the  community  has  suffered  by  their 
neighbourhood.  There  may  be  those  who  think  in- 
deed that  the  growth  is  inordinate,  that  the  establish- 
ments are  on  a  scale  of  expense  and  influence  dis- 
proportioned  to  our  numbers,  our  principles,  and  even 
our  independence.  But  to  all  such  suggestions  the 
answer  is,  that  w  hile  the  whole  is  spontaneous,  there 
can  be  nothing  to  apprehend. 

My  undertaking  will  be  unfinished,  if  I  do  not 
explain  the  political  and  physical  causes  of  the  re- 
sults, to  which  attention  has  been  invited.  But  that 
task,  I  may  not  attempt  on  this  occasion,  if  ever. 
It  is  said  to  be  the  American  fault,  to  expend  itself 
in  details,  instead  of  reasoning  by  generalisation. 
I  am  very  sensible  cf  this,  with  many  other  faults, 
in  this  discourse,  in  which,  scarcely  any  thing  more 


is  attempted  than  the  collection  of  facts.  But, 
however  imperfect  the  performance,  my  views 
will  be  accomplished,  if  the  glimpses  thus  afforded 
should  induce  some  qualified  person  to  examine  and 
explain  the  subject  philosophically.  The  opera- 
tions of  American  institutions  on  the  human  un- 
derstanding, are  a  noble  study  for  the  labours  of  a 
life.  The  most  intelligent  portions  of  mankind,  are 
animated  by  their  impulses  ;  which  already  actuate, 
and,  before  long,  must  regulate  the  destinies  of  the 
world.  The  first  settlemen:  of  this  continent  was 
from  England,  in  a  state  of  revolution,  when  all 
minds  were  exercised  with  new  ideas  of  religious 
and  political  liberty.  The  associates  of  Pym  and 
Hampden,  and  Raleigh,  Penn  and  Locke,  founded 
our  institutions.  A  republican  empire,  really  repre- 
sentative, always  as  ii  were,  in  a  state  of  temperate 
revolution,  has  been  ever  since  exciting  and  evolving 
the  great  principles  of  free  agency.  Our  simple 
and  peaceable,  but  irresistible,  religion  and  politics, 
are  inoffensively  reforming  the  brilliant  abuses, 
which  feudal  and  chivalric  barbarism  have  rivetted 
on  the  nations  of  Europe.  This  rouses  detraction 
against  the  whole  elements,  moral,  physical,  and 
intellectual,  as  well  as  political,  of  our  existence. 
Naturalists,  and  statists,  philosophers,  historians, 
ambassadors,  poets,  priests,  nobles,  tourists,  jour- 
nalists— I  speak  with  precision  to  this  catalogue — 
have  in  vain  sentenced  this  country  to  degradation. 
It  already  ranks  with  communities  highly  refined 
before  America  was  discovered.  France  and 
England  were  enjoying  Augustan  ages,  when  the 


66 


place  where  \ve  are  met  to  discourse  of  literature 
and  science,  was  a  wilderness.  But  one  hundred 
and  forty  years  have  elapsed,  since  the  patriarch  of 
Pennsylvania  first  landed  on  these  shores,  and  sowed 
them  with  the  germs  of  peace,  toleration,  and  self- 
government.  Since  when,  a  main  employment  has 
been  to  reclaim  the  forests  for  habitation.  It  is 
not  yet  half  a  century  since  the  United  States  were 
politically  emancipated  ;  it  is  only  since  the  late  war 
that  they  have  begun  to  be  intellectually  independent. 
Colonial  habits  and  reverence  still  rebuke  and 
counteract  intellectual  enterprise.  Education,  the 
learned  professions,  the  arts,  scientific  and  mechani- 
cal, legislation,  jurisprudence,  literature,  society — 
the  mind  in  a  word — require  time  to  be  freed  from 
Kuropean  pupilage. 

It  was  not  in  a  spirit  of  hostility  to  any  other 
country,  that  I  undertook  to  shew  what  has  been 
already  done  in  this  :  but  by  that  review  to  en- 
courage further  and  keener  exertions. 

To  those  who  will  inquire  and  reflect,  the  en- 
couragement of  philosophy  is  as  strong  as  the  in- 
stinct of  patriotism.  But  the  empire  of  habit  and 
of  prejudice  is  in  strong  opposition  to  the  supre- 
macy of  thought  and  reason.  There  was  a  time 
when  it  was  not  considered  disaffection  to  be 
ashamed  of  our  country,  nor  disloyalty  to  despair 
of  it,  when  we  re-colonised  ourselves.  But  within 
the  last  ten  years,  especially,  the  mind  of  America, 
has  thought  for  itself,  piercing  the  veil  of  European 
beau  ideal. 

Still  less,  however,  than  national 


07 

was  national  vanity  the  shrine  of  my  sacrifice. 
Comparative  views  are  indispensable.  I  might 
have  compared  America  now  with  America  forty 
years  ago,  which  would  have  presented  a  striking 
and  enlivening  contrast.  But  I  preferred  the  bolder 
view  of  America  compared  with  Europe,  disclaim- 
ing, however,  invidious  comparisons,  which  have 
been  studiously  avoided.  The  cause  asserted  is  of 
too  high  respect  to  be  defended  by  panegyric,  or 
avenged  by  invective.  The  truth  is  an  ample  vin- 
dication. Let  us  strive  to  refute  discredit  by 
constant  improvement.  Let  our  intellectual  motto 
be,  that  naught  is  done  while  aught  remains  to  be 
done  :  and  our  study  to  prove  to  the  world,  that 
the  best  patronage  of  religion,  science,  literature, 
and  the  arts,  of  whatever  the  mind  can  achieve, 

is  SELF-GOVERNMENT. 


Fon 


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